le HISTORY 



f A 



FHE 







V 



THE HISTORY OF THE 
LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



I 







NAPOLEON BOXAPAKTP: 

From a painting from life by David, now in the Public Library of 
Minneapolis, Minn. 



The History of the 
Louisiana Purchase 



BY 



JAMES K. HOSMER, Ph.D., LL. D. 

MEMBER OF THE MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION 

AUTHOR OF A SHORT HISTORY OF ANGLO-SAXON FREEDOM 

A SHORT mSTORY OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY, ETC. 



ILLUSTRATIONS ^ND MAP 




NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1902 




^333 



Copyright, 1902 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published April, 1902 



^ 



PEEFACE 



This book undertakes to describe a trans- 
action — the sale by the French Government 
to the United States of the western half of 
the Mississippi Valley, known at the time as 
Louisiana. At the fortunes of this vast re- 
gion, known now as the Louisiana Purchase, 
before and since that sale this book does 
nothing more than glance ; in a cursory way it 
gives only so much as is needed to make plain 
the character and importance of the incident. 

Now that we are about to celebrate, at 
St. Louis, one hundred years of possession on 
a scale commensurate with the grandeur of 
the acquisition, a book devoted closely to the 
crisis, written for the people, viewing affairs 
through the long perspective of a most 
eventful century, and recounting the Euro- 
pean as well as the American phases of the 
story, seems certainly to be in place. 

V 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

While holding his predecessors in great 
respect, and acknowledging a great obliga- 
tion to them, as the foot-notes will testify, the 
present writer ventures upon a new presenta- 
tion. He believes that the transaction was 
a piece of Napoleonic statesmanship, Jeffer- 
son and his negotiators playing only a sec- 
ondary part. Excepting by Mr. Henry 
Adams (History of the United States during 
the Administration of Thomas Jefferson), too 
little attention perhaps has been paid here- 
tofore in America to the French side of the 
matter. Mr. Adams's account, intended for 
scholarly readers, enlarges upon diplomatic 
details, and abbreviates certain picturesque 
points; and is besides so embedded with 
much other history, in a work of nine vol- 
umes, as to be not easily accessible. 

The present writer has approached his 
topic from the French side, making large use 
of French authorities, and giving at length 
some important secret history not heretofore 
fully set forth in English. Having in mind 
as readers, youths on the verge of maturity, 
and men and women too busy for deep study 
of the matter, he has felt that state-paper 

vi 



i^ 



Preface 

minutise miglit be spared or relegated to an 
appendix, while certain vividly dramatic pas- 
sages were made much of. In this book, 
then, while the conception of the event is 
somewhat unusual, it has been sought to put 
in strong light the brilliant personalities— 
the hopes, passions, disappointments— the 
thrilling incidents, that belong to the story. 

The writer wishes to express his thanks 
to Mr. R. G. Thwaites, the honored secretary 
of the Wisconsin Historical Society, for af- 
fording access to the Napoleon Correspon- 
dance, documents never translated and rare in 
America ; also to Mr. James L. Whitney, of 
the Boston Public Library, for permission to 
use the Memoires of Lucien Bonaparte, a 
work still more rare. The Public Library of 
Minneapolis possesses a complete set of the 
Mo7iiteur, the French official journal, from its 
establishment in 1789 to the present day. 
The writer has had this daily record of what 
happened during the Revolution and the 
First Empire always at hand, and has been 
able to glean from the pages some interest- 
ing material. 

In conclusion, obligation must be ac- 



vu 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

knowledged to Mr. T. B. Walker, president 
of the Board of Directors of the Minneapolis 
Public Library, for permission to reproduce 
for this work the Louisiana Purchase Napo- 
leon. This magnificent jDicture, now in the 
Public Library at Minneapolis, was painted 
from life by David soon after the transfer- 
ence of Louisiana to the United States. Na- 
poleon presented it to Marshal Davoust, 
who retained it through his life at his country- 
seat, and from whose descendants it was pur- 
chased by Mr. Walker. It is probably the 
most impressive Napoleonic memorial in the 
country, and is appropriately located in a 
city on the west bank of the Mississi23pi, in 
a region the destinies of which the mighty 
Corsican so powerfully influenced. 

Jaivies K. Hosmee. 

Minneapolis Public Library, 
March 24, 1902. 



vm 



i^ 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER P^«^^ 

I. — How Louisiana came to be 1-20 

Developmentof United States profoundly atfected by influ- 
ences from Europe— Independence secured through French 
help— Acquisition of Louisiana due to French statesmanship 
—Belief of France that colonies are necessary to her national 
greatness— Causes of her ill-success— Illustrations of her 
faulty policy from India— American parallels— Career of 
Champlain; of La Salle— Louisiana named— Career of Iber- 
ville—Crozat and John Law— Inmiigration in time of the 
Mississippi Bubble— How wives were found for the settlers 
—Line of explorers continued— Family of La Verendrye— 
Energy of France in middle of eighteenth century— Found- 
ing of Fort Duquesne— Braddock's defeat— Victories of Mont- 
calm— Loss of America to France through Pitt and Wolfe- 
Louisiana given to Spain in 1Y62. 

IL — Louisiana under Spain 21-40 

France gives up for a time thoughts of foreign dominion- 
England loses through her the Thirteen Colonies— Spanish 
governors of Louisiana— The Creoles— Spain foments the 
spirit of separatism in the United States— Extent of Spanish 
dominion— Attempts of France to recover Louisiana— Ap- 
pearance on the scene of Napoleon— Portrait of Napoleon at 
Minneapolis— Appropriateness of its location— Sale of Louisi- 
ana an interesting crisis in Napoleon's career— Strange spell 
in which he binds the world— His interest in the idea of a 
colonial empire— Plan for invasion of India in 1801— A glance 
at Spain one hundred years ago— Character of Carlos IV— 
The Queen— Godoy, the Prince of Peace— His good service 

ix 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

CHAPTER PAGES 

to the United States — Napoleon tries to regain Louisiana — 
Negotiations of Lucien Bonaparte — Adroitness of Godoy — 
Napoleon baffled. 



III. — France prepares to take Louisiana . . 41-60 

Louisiana at the beginning of the century — Old New Orleans 
— Commerce, amusements — Spanish officials — Cumbrous and 
stately system — Napoleon presses his colonial policy — San 
Domingo in the French Revolution — Toussaint I'Ouverture — 
His friendliness to the United States — Blocks path of Napo- 
leon in the West — Latter's infamous behavior to Toussaint — 
Exiled by General Le Clerc — French balked in San Domingo 
— Napoleon presses for the occupation of Louisiana — Exten- 
sive preparations — Connection of Bernadotte with the matter — 
Victor appointed — What might have happened to Napoleon's 
marshals — Treaty of retrocession tinally signed — Terms of 
the treaty — Napoleon's unfriendliness to the United States — 
Appearance of Jefferson on the scene — His opinions — His 
friendliness toward France — Robert R. Livingston sent to 
Paris as minister — Imminence of a quarrel with France — 
Gathering tempest — Wisdom and mildness of Jefterson. 

IV. — How Jefferson builded wiser than he knew 61-79 
Morales abrogates the right of deposit— Exasperation of 
America — Demand of West and South for active measures — 
Monroe despatched to France — His instructions — Subsidence 
of anger in America — No desire to acquire more than the 
mouth of the Mississippi — Jefferson's prudence and strength 
of character— Arrival at New Orleans of Laussat — Congress 
considers the seizure of Nev/ Orleans— Napoleon's colossal 
disappointment — He starts out on a new policy — War de- 
clared on England— The British ambassador insulted — Our 
debt to Toussaint and the Haytians— Character of Lucien 
Bonaparte — His vivid account of Napoleon's sadden change 
of policy — He palliates Napoleon's rejection of republicanism 
— Joseph intimates Napoleon's determination to sell Louisi- 
ana—Joseph and Lucien resolve to interfere — The apparition 
of Napoleon as Emperor. 

X 



a 



Contents 

PAGES 
CHAPTER 

v.— Napoleon and Joseph Bonaparte quarrel over 

Louisiana ^^"^'^ 

Joseph and Lucieu make plans for the iiiturvicw wlLli the First 
Consul— Lucien finds Napoleon in the bath-tub— Napoleon 
refers to October, ITQS-Talk on poetry— Napoleon as a poet 
—They discuss Paoli— Lucien as a Jacobin— Napoleon thinks 
men not born for freedom—" Machiavelli is right "—Entrance 
of Joseph Bonaparte— Louisiana introduced— Napoleon an- 
nounces his intention to sell it— Brothers express disapproval 
—Napoleon defies the Chambers— The quarrel becomes 
heated— Rage of Joseph— Eage of Napoleon— Home-thrust 
from Joseph— The field bedewed, though not with blood— 
Lucien's interposition— The passion subsides— The valet 
faints— The combatants retire. 

VI.— The quarrel with Lucien .... 98-112 
Lucien's opinion of Bourrienne— The First Consul affectionate 
—Gives his reasons for selling Louisiana— Lucien argues 
ao-ainst- Eegrets over San Domingo— Napoleon on the Brit- 
ish navy— His colossal self-confidence- Tries to win Lucien's 
support— His scorn rises— Lucien attempts to soften him— 
Disapproves of the unconstitutional measure— The First Con- 
sul's rage— Lucien sticks to his guns— Napoleon beside him- 
self— Lucien's defiance- The broken snufF- box— Lucien re- 
tires—Reference to a third quarrel— Lucien sums up the 
character of Napoleon. 

VII.— Livingston at Paris 113-129 

Livingston's birth and descent— His public services-Chan- 
cellor of New York— Wins friendship of Napoleon— His 
statue at Washington— Begins his work at Paris in 1801— 
Difliculty of his situation— Baffled by Talleyrand— Berna- 
dotte appointed to command in Louisiana— Fears of Ameri- 
cans—Livingston's appeal to the French Government— Victor 
replaces Bernadotte as commander for Louisiana— The expe- 
dition balked— America does not desire Louisiana— Boldness 
and force of Livingston— Trials of his position— Misconcep- 
tions— Appointment of Monroe as special envoy— Talleyrand 

xi 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 



CHAPTER PAGES 

proposes at last to sell Louisiana — He retires from the scene 
— Livingston's subsequent work in connection with Kobert 
Fulton. 

VIIL — Louisiana sold 130-147 

Barbe-Marbois, Minister of Finance — Napoleon's agent in 
selling Louisiana — His history of the affair — His report of 
Napoleon's declarations — Impetuousness of the birst Consul 
— The French spoliation claims — Arrival of Monroe at Paris 
— The treaty of cession arranged — Napoleon's regret at alien- 
ating the people of Louisiana — His affectionate farewell to 
them — Treaty signed — Livingston eloquent and prophetic — 
Napoleon by far the foremost iigure in the cession— Small 
importance of American negotiators — Disposition of the 
purchase-money. 

IX. — The party wrangle over the purchase . 148-160 
Embarrassment of Jefferson at unexpected result — The op- 
position alert— Federalist action of 1802 in time of Morales 
edict — Eeady for violent measures — Republicans more peace- 
ful — Jefferson's wisdom — Unreasonable hatred of him— The 
ridicule poured out— Exaggeration of the financial load — 
Newspaper criticisms — Good conduct of the administration — 
Jefferson's view of the powers of Congress — He makes no 
public expression — Federalists state the constitutional objec- 
tions — The impolicy of the treaty — Republican replies — The 
treaty carried in the House by a large majority — Pickering's 
speech in the Senate exalting States Rights— Treaty carried in 
Senate by large majority — Wrangle as to method of govern- 
ment — Matter decided to discontent of New England — Im- 
portance of the debate and decisions as affecting constitu- 
tional interpretations. 

X. — The United States in possession . . . 161-178 
Laussat, French prefect at New Orleans — Festivities — Grief 
and departure of the Ursuline nuns — Astonishment over news 
of sale to the United States — The old Cabildo— Tlie pageant 
there of the cession — The Faubourg Sainte Marie — The Place 
d'Armes and river — Laussat's opinions — Arrival of Claiborne 

xii 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGES 

and Wilkinson, American commissioners — Their ceremonious 
reception — The formalities — Claiborne's inaugural — Lower- 
ing of the French flag — Pathetic significance of the act — Sad- 
ness of the people— Anglo-Saxon ways long a burden, not a 
blessing — Josiah Quiucy's opposition to admission of Louisi- 
ana in 1811— Discontent fifty years later. 

XI. — What a century has brought forth . . 179-204 
Vicissitudes in ownership and indefiniteness in boundaries — 
Discontent of the Spaniards — Limits finally settled — Igno- 
rance as to what lay within the Purchase— Imaginative ac- 
counts — Surpassed, however, by the real wealth — Lewis and 
Clark despatched — Their successful exploration — Lieutenant 
Zebulou M. Pike's exploration — Appearance in the West of 
Aaron Burr — English attempt in 1815 — Jackson's success — 
Acquisition of Floi'ida — Of Texas— Of the Pacific coast — The 
first steamboats — The cotton-gin and its consequences — The 
irrepressible conflict — The Missouri Compromise — The coun- 
try of the Purchase occupied — Douglas and the JMebraska Bill 
— The Purchase in the civil war — Influence of the locomotive 
in producing rapid development — States of the Purchase — 
Their number, population, and wealth — Character and prom- 
ise of the civilization. 

Appendix A. — Livingston to Talleyrand, February, 

1803 205 

Appendix B. — Napoleon's order for the sale of 

Louisiana 214 

Appendix C. — Text of the treaty of cession from 

France to America 217 

Index , 225 



Xiu 



.^ 



LIST OF FULL-PAGE PORTEAITS 



FACING 
PAGE 

Napoleon Bonaparte .... Frontispiece 

Thomas Jefferson 64 

James Monroe 126 

Andrew Jackson 194 



Map, showing land acquired by the United States . 204 



XV 



/ < 



THE HISTORY OF 
THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



CHAPTER I 

HOW LOTJISIAT^A CAME TO BE 

When TMers, in liis History of tlie Con- 
sulate and Empire, comes to speak of the sale 
of Louisiana by Bonaparte to the United 
States, he says, "The United States are in- 
debted for their birth and for their greatness 
to the long struggle between France and 

England." * 

American pride dislikes to admit that our 
independence was not due to our own efforts ; 
that the well-trained leaders and 7,000 good 
French troops who did such service at York- 
town, while the Count de Grasse, at the 
mouth of the Chesapeake, blocked the path 
for the reenforcements which Cornwallis was 
expecting, were a decisive factor in our war. 

* Vol. ii, p. 499. Translation. 
1 1 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 



That point we are not concerned to argue ; 
but as regards the second point of M. Thiers 
— that the vast dimensions of our nation are 

due to an influence 
from Europe, America 
itself having had less 
to do with the matter 
than has been claimed 
— it is the purpose of 
this book to show that 
the facts of history bear 
the French writer out. 
That the United States 
in 1803 became im- 
-^^^^i^o^^^^^^^:/ niensely extended in 
J^^^====^"^''^^^ ^ territory ; that at the 
same time our interpre- 
tation of the Constitution became enlarged, so 
that henceforth " the spirit and not the letter 
was appealed to," making further develop- 
ment possible — a change in the American 
point of view which has affected us pro- 
foundly ^ — all this came about because 
France and England at this moment were in 
a crisis of their immemorial quai-rel, and Na- 

* Sloan, Life of Napoleon, vol. iv, pp. 247, 248. 




How Louisiana Came to Be 

poleon saw a way out of his difficulty by 
helping the Uuited States to broad dominion. 

Taking up the story of Louisiana, then, 
from the French side, as it is certainly proper 
to do since it came to us through French 
statesmanship with little agency of our own, 
the remark of M. Leroy-Beaulieu will open 
the consideration well : * " Colonization is for 
France a question of life or death. France 
will either become a great African power, or 
in a century or two it will be nothing but a 
secondary European power. It will count in 
the world about as Greece or Roumania count 
in Europe." 

To-day, thinks this leader, it is vital to 
the position of France that she should be a 
colonizing power, Africa being the sphere at 
the present moment open. Four hundred 
years ago the same thought seems to have 
ruled, America being in that day the field ; 
for France became active among the earliest, 
after the discoveries of Columbus and the 

* " La colonisation est pour la France une question de vie 
ou de mort: ou la France deviendra une grande puissance 
af ricaine, ou elle ne sera dans un siecle ou deux qu'un puissance 
europeenne secondaire : comptera dans le monde a peu pres 
comme la Grece ou la Roumanie comptent en Europe." 

3 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Portuguese, in fixing her grasp upon the new 
lands. Between 1504 and 1603 eighteen 
separate expeditions were made to America.* 
In the latter year it was that Samuel Cham- 
plain set out to found Canada. Mr. Walter 
Frewen Lord points out that the driving 

force in French coloni- 
zation, then as always, 
has been the spirit of 
adventure. Until the 
present day a series of 
brilliant adventurers 
can be traced, vividly 
imaginative, intrepid, 
indefatigable, often of 
great capacity: types 
of the class are Cham- 
plain, and in our time Marchand of Fashoda. 
By such men everything possible to individ- 
ual prowess has been done repeatedly. The 
reason why results have been meager and so 
often not permanent, says the English critic, 
is that the explorers have not been sustained. 
Kings as a general rule have been quite in- 

* Walter Frewen Lord, Lost Empires of the Modern 
World. 

4 



^ ^ 




How Louisiana Came to Be 

different ; there has been no national or pop- 
ular movement to back up the pathfinders. 
It must also be said that the pathfinders, 
when cooperation was important, have shown 
too often a disposition to quarrel, rather than 
to combine forces. Call it vanity, or call it 
by the higher name ambition — the craving to 
possess the admiration of the world — this 
quality seems to burn in the heart of a French- 
man with especial intensity ; so that often 
through brooking no rival near him, the hero 
lets his enterprise go to utter wreck, a fate 
which a better harmony in the actors would 
have prevented. 

To glance for a moment at a region far 
away from Louisiana, the story of the French 
in the East Indies is very illustrative. Why 
is not India to-day the possession of France 
rather than England? The French were 
there before the English ; Europe has never 
sent out to a foreign strand abler men than 
those who stood for France. They failed 
because the Government was supine, because 
there was no backing from the peojDle ; more 
than all, perhaps, because they fell out among 
themselves. They directed against one an- 

5 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

other an acute and aggressive energy, which 
if applied to the obstacles they had to meet 
would have consumed them, as the vinegar of 
Hannibal ate a pathway through the Alps. 
Their force and sharpness went out in an 
acrid spite. In the first half of the eight- 
eenth century in India all promised well for 
France. Dupleix among the inharmonious na- 
tive states, with marvelous courage and ad- 
dress, found ways to dominate and reduce to 
order. He had little help except from his own 
genius ; his appeals made little impression on 
the court ; the nation was indiiferent. Worst 
of all, when an important helper came to stand 
at his side, in La Bourdonnais, bringing him 
a fleet which at once won triumphs, Dupleix, 
instead of welcoming him, treated him as an 
intruder who might in some way diminish his 
own credit, pursuing him until La Bourdon- 
nais lay in the Bastile, though few men of 
that time deserved better of their country. 
In succeeding years Lally-ToUendal and Bussy 
paralleled the heroism and address of their 
predecessors ; but again all went to wreck, 
through neglect from outside and spiteful 
contention within. Last came Suffren, a sailor 

6 



How Louisiana Came to Be 



of the highest genius, who won for a time an 
advantage which France has usually lacked — 
the command of the sea. But all came to 
naught. The adventurers were left to their 
own resources ; they fell a prey to their own 
foibles when success was right at hand. The 
slower race, more persistent, pulling together 
to better purpose, if less adroit and brilliant, 
succeeded ; and to-day 
the Emperor of India 
is the sovereign of 
England. 

What happened in 
America was of a piece 
with the story of the 
French in the East In- 
dies. The^adventurous 
spirits, impressed, as 
they are still impressed, 
with the idea that their 
country's greatness de- 
pended on colonial ex- 
pansion, were early in the field. Jacques Car- 
tier penetrated to the site of Montreal in 
1534, and in 1603 Samuel Champlain was at 
Quebec. Champlain perhaps is the noblest 

7 




Uf;- 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

type of the French colonizer that history af- 
fords, possessed as he was of all the conspic- 
uous merits of the type, with few of the de- 
fects. The prelude to his Canadian experi- 
ence was picturesque to a degree noteworthy 
even in that age. After proving himself a 
good soldier, he sailed, at thirty-two, to His- 
paniola and the Spanish Main, keeping always 
an intelligent diary, in which occurs the, for 
that day, splendidly imaginative suggestion 
of an Isthmian canal. After penetrating as 
far as Mexico he returned to France, going, 
as the seventeenth century opened, to break 
the path for his race in Canada. There is a 
story that the first settlers of Massachusetts, 
setting out from Boston to build a road west- 
ward, stopped at Watertown, scarcely ten 
miles distant, reporting to the magistrates 
that a road running farther in that direction 
would never be required. Massachusetts Bay 
bounded their horizon. The want of imagi- 
nation in the plodding English is well illus- 
trated in the tradition. It marked the lead- 
ers as well as the humbler men, and the 
lack was as noteworthy in the generations 
that followed as in the first comers. It is 

8 



How Louisiana Came to Be 

indeed in contrast with tlie wide visions of 
the pioneers of New France. As Champlain 
could foresee some day an Isthmian canal, so 
at Quebec he recognized himself as the fore- 
runner of something mighty, and presently 
penetrated to the very heart of the wilder- 
ness, confronting the Iroquois in regions which 
he meant to redeem. With the brilliant qual- 
ities of the best of his class, Champlain seems 
to have been without the shortcomings ; his 
association with his co-workers seems to have 
been always sweet and genial, with no touch 
of the acrid jealousy which corrodes so many 
a reputation otherwise shining. But he had 
no support either from ministers or nation. 
He worked and schemed indefatigably for 
thirty -two years ; but with such small result 
on account of the indifference and unwisdom 
of the world, that at his death there was little 
to show at Quebec but the garrison of two 
hundred soldiers, subsisting on supplies 
brought from France. In a teeming land, the 
food went ungathered for want of hands to 
get it. In his disappointment and failure his 
patience and good humor are pathetic. If 
sustained, as has been said, he would have 

9 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 



colonized from Canada to Florida, or in tlie 
other direction to the sources of the Missis- 
sippi. He died bound to his rock, and not 
until a generation had passed did a man 
aj)pear to take up his work. 

In 1666 Kobert Cavelier, Sieur de La 
Salle, came to Kew France, a scion of a noble 
house in Kouen, in whom strength and weak- 
ness w^ere picturesque- 
ly blended. He was a 
truer type of a French 
adventurer than Cham- 
plain, for in him the 
foibles of the class were 
plain, as they were not 
in the founder of Que- 
bec. La Salle w^as to 
found something far 
greater, and needed for 
the task the power of 
beholding enkindling visions, an indomitable 
courage, and a resourceful intelligence. He 
failed of thorough success largely because, on 
account of vanity and unamiability, he roused 
the enmity of his co-workers instead of win- 
ning their attachment. His old seigniory on 

10 




How Louisiana Came to Be 

the St. Lawrence, La Chine, still commemo- 
rates in its name the soaring enthusiasm which 
led him into the belief that the broad river 
above the chute was the pathway to China. 
The dream of reaching China he was forced 
to abandon, though his foot pressed far on 
the road which, two hundred years after his 
time, came to be held the shortest way thither ; 
but he almost made actual a vision scarcely 
less bold. Discovering the Ohio, traversing 
the Great Lakes, first of white men descend- ^ 

ing the Mississippi to its mouth, it was he ^ p:; 
who in 1682 gave the name Louisiana to the -f | "^ 
vast region lying east and west of the great | • ^ 
river — the Mississippi Valley, in fact — and 
took possession of it in the name of his sov- '^^^^ 
ereign. He was able to map out fairly the 
great domain into which he had penetrated, 
and conceived the thought long cherished by 
his successors, of running a chain of posts 
from the St. Lawrence strongholds to the 
cities he meant to build in the south near the 
Gulf. If things had been a little different 
much might have come to pass in his time. 
Louis XIV could appreciate a brave man and 
gave him a fleet and resources. If only the 

11 



^ 

Kl 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Huguenots, driven out by the Revocation of 
tlie Edict of Nantes just at this time, could 
have come to New France as the exiled Puri- 
tans fifty years before had come to New Eng- 
land ! But even the wilderness had no hos- 
pitality for them ; no Protestant could set 
foot in New France. There was no popular 
movement thither of any kind. Misfortune 
overtook La Salle. His fleet w^as wrecked ; 
among his followers he seems to have had no 
faithful friend but Tonty, and he was far to 
the north among the Illinois. Mutiny that 
had followed him from the 
first now took the upper 
hand in the wretched com- 
pany that remained to 
him, and his life went out 
in a Texas waste under 
^ the weapons of his own 
men. 

^^ fj^ V/" "^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ great 

^^^^^^ colonizers was by no means 

extinct. The mantle of La Salle fell upon 
Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, who perhaps 
was not inferior to him in force or fire. Iber- 
ville, a young Canadian seigneur, won his 

12 




How Louisiana Came to Be 



spurs by driving the English out of Hudson 
Bay, establishing a control in the north that 
endured for years. He was as efficient in 
tropic seas, on the Spanish Main, as among 
the icebergs. But his chief desert was the es- 
tablishment upon the 
Gulf of Mexico of a 
secure French colony, 
which made it possible 
for his young brother 
Bienville, a few years 
later, in 1717, to lay 
the foundation of New 
Orleans. 

As the eighteenth 
century proceeds the 
colonizing of Louisi- 
ana goes on in a course characteristically 
French. The nation takes little interest, few 
voluntary settlers coming to the new coun- 
try ; when immigrants appear, it is to hunt 
gold or fur-bearing beasts among the savages, 
in desultory wandering, rather than to till 
the soil and establish homes. The Govern- 
ment is quite indifferent. In the evil days of 
the Kegency, and of Louis XV, the colony is 

13 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 

first given over to the monopolist Crozat ; 
then to Jolin Law, to be exploited in tlie 
Mississippi Eubble. Of the welfare of the 

unfortunate planta- 
tion there is no heed ; 
but fortunes may be 
made out of it for 
courtly spendthrifts, 
or the bankrupt Gov- 
ernment gain relief at 
the expense of the 
far - away dependen- 
cy. The Mississippi 
Bubble, so ruinous 
to those caught by its 
flattering iridescence, 
did, through some good providence, bring 
benefit to Louisiana. It was necessary to 
Law's schemes that the land should be peo- 
pled ; and though the methods for procuring 
emigrants were misrepresentation and even 
atrocious kidnaping, some thousands were 
deported of a fairly respectable character. 
These, finding return hopeless, at last, though 
heart-broken, made the best of the situation, 
^nd a substantial town became established 

14 




How Louisiana Came to Be 

upon the river-bank Tlie preponderance of 
men in tlie community proving to be an ele- 
ment of insecurity, a grotesque remedy was 
sought : the shipping from France of cai'goes 
of marriageable girls, filles a la cassette, so 
called from the little trunks in which each 
prospective bride carried the trousseau pro- 
vided for her by the Government. The girls 
were speedily mated on arriving at the levee, 
and many a proper and happy union was the 
result. In this direct and business-like match- 
making the Ursuline nuns played an impor- 
tant part, recruiting the companies in France, 
chaperoning them sometimes on the voyage, 
and sheltering them when they reached Louis- 
iana — by no means the smallest of the sei^- 
ices rendered by the excellent sisterhood to 
the infant plantation. 

But while the record of the settlement is 
so largely one of struggle and suffering, bril- 
liant adventurers were active carrying the flag 
of France farther and farther into the wilder- 
ness. With little support or countenance, ex- 
cept from their own intrepid spirits, they 
strove heroically to roll back the mystery 
from the face of the great continent. Du 

15 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Tisne, Bourgmont, and the brothers Mallet 
penetrated into the southwest ; at last a final 
gleam of the splendid fire that had burned in 
Champlain, La Salle, and Iberville shot up in 
the far North. When that died down, the 
glory of French pioneering, as far as North 
America is concerned, became forever extin. 
guished. La Verendrye, son of an oflicer of 
the regiment Carignan-Salieres, a body of 
regular troops that did good service in Canada 
at an early day, going to France, became an 
energetic soldier, and at Malplaquet, receiv- 
ing six saber-cuts from some trooper of Marl- 
borough, was left on the field for dead. But 
he survived to return to America, where deep 
in what is now Manitoba, to the north and 
west of Lake Superior, he established a chain 
of posts and brought up two sons as indomi- 
table as himself. They lived on the northern 
edge of that vast Louisiana which La Salle, 
standing near the Gulf of Mexico, had claimed 
as the possession of the gi-eat king at Ver- 
sailles. The younger La Verendrye, striking 
west beyond the Mississippi, across the Mis- 
souri, and far over the plains, beheld, in 1742, 
first of white men, the Rocky Mountains, The 

16 



How Louisiana Came to Be 

achievement of tlie La Verendryes, father and 
sons, was of a piece with the best work of the 
great path-breakers of their stock, both in the 
Orient and the Occident. They died at last, 
worn out, utterly poor and forgotten ; and 
that, too, was of a piece with the treatment 
which France has too often accorded to her 
best and bravest sons. 

Just before the middle of the eighteenth 
century an access of energy came to the 
French administration, which prepared as it 
had never before done to free itself from the 
threatening neighborhood of the Thirteen 
English Colonies ; or, if their destruction were 
impossible, at least to reduce them to impo- 
tence. Baffled in Hudson Bay, and menaced 
in Louisiana by the establishment of the new 
colony Georgia, under the leadership of Ogle- 
thorpe the philanthropist, who at the same 
time was a capable soldier, the French re- 
solved to fight it out with the English, es23e- 
cially in the middle regions, below the St. 
Lawrence and on the approaches to the Ohio. 
The Thirteen Colonies were indeed in danger ; 
for though much more populous than New 

France, they were inharmonious among them- 
2 17 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

selves, and eacli provincial government was 
weak and short-sighted. By extraordinary 
luck ratlier than through any soldiership New 
England captured Louisburg in 1 745, but many 
gloomy and anxious years followed before 
another success was gained. The following 
year the English colonists felt with sinking 
hearts that but for the interposition of pes- 
tilence and tempests the fleet of d'Anville 
would have laid in ashes the coast towns, 
by way of reprisal for what had been done 
at Cape Breton. A few years later, about 
Presque Isle, on Lake Erie, there was a buzz of 
energy, soldiers, voyageurs, and Indians, work- 
ing with canoes and bateaux to force their 
way to the Alleghany. Presently the French 
hold upon the Ohio Valley was made good by 
the building of Fort Duquesne at that point 
of especial vantage, the junction of the Alle- 
ghany and Monongahela. Braddock's enter- 
prise against it, in 1754, set the mark for the 
extreme of failure. 

The best arm that ever struck for France 
in the New World was now bared for smiting. 
Montcalm was in the field, and by capturing 
Oswego, in 1756, Niagara at the west and 

18 



How Louisiana Came to Be 



Frontenac at the nortli already being Frencli, 
lie made Ontario a French lake. Next year 
he captured Fort William Henry, at the south- 
ern end of Lake George. With the command 
of the Ohio and Lake On- 
tario both secured, the 
French were now pushing 
from the rear at the very 
heart of New England, and 
with the victory of Ticon- 
deroga the prospect be- 
came for the English hope- 
less indeed. 

But in 1758 came about 
a conjunction "almost mi- 
raculous " ; ^ and only by such a conjunction 
could the English colonies have been held. 
A great statesman and a great soldier stood 
forth together — Pitt and Wolfe — and, work- 
ing hand in hand, saved the day in America. 
Louisburg, which had been restored to France 
by treaty, fell again, in 1758, to Wolfe ; Brad- 
street seized Fort Frontenac ; Forbes captured 
Fort Duquesne. In 1759 came the confp de 
grace of the Plains of Abraham, and for 

* W. F. Lord. 

19 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 

France all was over. In November, 1762, 
Louis XV ceded New Orleans and the coun- 
try west of the Mississippi to Spain. With 
the surrender of Fort Chartres, on the Missis- 
sippi, by St. Ange, in 1765, to Major Grant 
and his detachment of the Black Watch, not 
a rod of ground was left to France on the 
whole continent of America. How nearly 
she succeeded, and yet almost at once she was 
utterly dispossessed ! At the same moment 
the empire founded by Dupleix and Bussy in 
the Orient crumbled to pieces. Failure in 
both hemispheres was due to the same causes 
— the brilliant, adventurous leaders were sus- 
tained by neither king nor nation ; among 
themselves they were too often spiteful rivals, 
not friends. The English were dull and 
slow, but they were tenacious ; after a fashion 
they pulled together, and they won. 



CHAPTEK II 

LOUISIANA UNDER SPAIN 

When Canada was lost to France the 
Ohio Valley was also lost, and the region, 
too, south of the Ohio and east of the Mis- 
sissippi River. There remained to France in 
America only New Orleans and the unex- 
plored area west of the Mississippi, to which 
now the name Louisiana became restricted. 
Sore and discouraged through her misfor- 
tunes, she abandoned for a time dreams of 
foreign empire, feeling that her interests 
would be best served by fostering develop- 
ment at home.* To win the good-will of 
Spain, whom, in her weakness, she desired as 
an ally, Louis XV signed a treaty by which 
Louisiana was ceded to that power — a treaty 
regretted by the nation and long kept secret. 
Thus France stripped herself of her American 

* Barbe-Marbois, History of Louisiana. 

21 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

possessions. Naturally, desire for revenge 
upon England constantly rankled — a craving 
tliat was fully gratified twenty years later, 
when, through her well-timed and energetic 
help, the Thii^teen Colonies wrested them- 
selves free, and for the moment Britain ap- 
peared to undergo a humiliation deeper 
even than that which her rival had suf- 
fered. 

D'Abadie, the French governor at New 
Orleans, at last broke the news of the cession 
to the people. The hearts of the Creoles 
were filled with consternation that their coun- 
try should thus withdraw itself. Their fate 
seemed almost worse than that of the Aca- 
dians, whom the English had driven out; 
many of the Acadians, indeed, who had 
sought a refuge in Louisiana, now for a second 
time underwent expatriation. The Spaniards 
were slow in taking hold, leaving the French 
administration undisturbed for more than five 
years. Not until 1768, while the colonists 
were still begging not to be alienated, did the 
Spanish governor appear. Gayarre, the Creole 
historian of Louisiana, gives a pleasanter 
picture of the Spanish governors and their 

22 



Louisiana Under Spain 

administration tlian one might expect. Amer- 
icans are inclined to do but scant justice to 
the great and unfortunate race with which so 
often we have fallen into difficulties, and it 
ought to be wholesome for us to dwell for a 
moment on the line of figures, for the most 
part respectable, who administered Louisiana 
for nearly forty years. Antonio d'Ulloa, the 
firstj was a man of the highest distinction in 
the world of science and letters. As a bright 
boy of nineteen, he was set to measure, in 
company with French savants, the meridian 
at the equator, the attempt being made in 
South America. He traveled widely, served 
honorably on land and sea, and underwent 
many vicissitudes. He lived for a time as a 
prisoner in England, where his literary and 
scientific ability won him much attention. 
He had recognition elsewhere also, becoming 
a member of the Academies of Stockholm, 
Paris, and Berlin. In character he was brave, 
just, and humane ; and in his administration, 
though thwarted from Madrid, desired to be 
kind and liberal. 

D'Ulloa's successor, an adventurer of Irish 
blood, O'Reilly, pursued a barbarous policy, 

23 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

but those that came later were better. Ca- 
rondelet, though disliking Americans, whom 
he had too much reason to regard as filibus- 
ters quite without scruples, was intelligent 
and broad-minded, believing in admitting to 
the colony foreigners of every creed, provided 
they were quiet and law-abiding. He was 
alert and energetic, putting his province into 
as good a state of defense as his means al- 
lowed. Gayoso, who came next, though in 
religion narrow, showed good sense and vigor 
in correctinfic abuses in the cession of land. 
Most interesting of all, perhaps, was Galvez, a 
man high-born, scarcely past the period of 
youth, who swayed the fortunes of Louisiana 
at the time of our Revolution. He did the 
United States good service by attacking bold- 
ly and effectively the British at the south. 
Spain had joined France against the island 
power, and no champion of hers was so bril- 
liant as the young hidalgo for the moment at 
New Orleans. He operated against Natchez 
and captured Pensacola, winning back for 
Spain Florida, which for a time she had 
lost, and received as reward the viceroy alty 
of Mexico. 

24 



Louisiana Under Spain 

The burdens upon tlie Creoles were liglit, 
the expenses of administration being paid 
largely from outside. Trade restrictions were 
rigidly drawn on paper, but the smuggler 
thrived. The people had no occasion to feel 
aversion to the foreign rule, and subsided into 
indifference. In the year 1788, just after the 
adoption by the United States of the Consti- 
tution, Spain, feeling no friendship for the 
new nation (she had no reason to feel friend- 
ship), offered the free navigation of the Mis- 
sissippi River as a bribe to the western com- 
munities. They were not yet organized as 
States; separatist feeling was rife among them. 
Perhaps they might break off, if encouraged, 
from the seaboard States, and from this de- 
fection Spain might reap advantage. As Mr. 
Henry Adams says : " Spain lay alongside the 
south and west of the United States like a 
whale — huge, helpless, profitable. Her rule 
stretched from the Lake of the Woods to the 
Gulf, including Texas, Mexico, and California, 
as well as Louisiana ; while still farther down, 
South America even to Patagonia was also 
under her sway. Far more than half the 
territory of the United States has been gained 

25 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

from this vast inert bulk, rarely in ways not 
open to criticism." 

France had not ceased to be sorry that 
she had given up Louisiana, whose people re- 
mained at heart faithfully French, though so 
roughly cast oif. As the eighteenth century 
drew on, France tried repeatedly to recover 
what she began to feel had been too incon- 
siderately given up. Vergennes, the minister 
under whom France gave help to our struggle 
for independence, tried to recover the lost 
possession during the elation over the crip- 
pling of England, when the Thirteen Colonies 
went free. Another effort was made in 1795, 
also unsuccessful ; as was still a third effort 
made by Carnot somewhat later. On the 
latter occasion a splendid price was offered 
in an Italian kingdom for the Spanish infanta 
and her husband; but the Spanish king, a 
most faithful Catholic, refused aggrandize- 
ment which was to come through despoiling 
the States of the Church. At this time a 
strong party in France, tired of revolutionary 
convulsions, aimed at peace in Europe and an 
extension of power abroad. Of this j)arty 

26 



Louisiana Under Spain 

no other than the notable Talleyrand was, or 
aspired to be, the head ; a churchman who 
had risen to be Bishop of Autnn, but who 
had become unfrocked body and soul (his 
frock had served no end but to cover a mul- 
titude of sins), and who stands in French 
history as the especial type of unscrupulous 
cunning. He appears to have grown into a 
feeling of shame that he had ever held revo- 
lutionary ideas, and as the century approached 
its end, favored a restoration in France of the 
spirit of the old regime. He said of the 
United States, which he had visited in 1794, 
that the nation was devoured by pride and 
ambition, determined to dominate America, 
and to have influence in Europe; that she 
was really bound to England, and that her 
path must by all means be blocked. Talley- 
rand's practical scheme was for France to 
help Spain, receiving in return Louisiana and 
Florida ; but just here, from being a leader 
he was dwarfed into a mere instrument by 
the sudden stepping upon the scene of an in- 
comparable figure — the great protagonist in 
the drama with which we are at present 
occupied. 

27 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

In tlie Public Lihi'iiry of Minneapolis 
hangs an heroic full-length portrait of Na- 
poleon, an original by David. He stands in 
his imperial I'obes, the mantle bes])rent with 
the golden be(\^, the front full of the power 
and beauty which we may believe it pos- 
sessed at the moment when he rose to the 
height of dominion. His licad is not yet sur- 
mounted by the imperial crown; but with 
one hand he reaches out toward the globe 
the symbol of empire, which he is just u])on 
the point of grasping. To tlie right and h'ft 
are Josephine and Marie Louise, the wife 
whom he re])udiatcd and the wife who took 
her place, originals by Lefeb\'r(», also of life 
size. It is a magnificent ])res(Mitment of this 
most magnetic hero of tlie century, jierhaps 
of all the centui'ies, just as he mounts to the 
pinnacle of his greatness. The portrait when 
painted was given by Napoleon's dii'ection to 
Marshal Davoust, in whose fainil\ it was 
handed down; until, fall iug u])on evil days, 
they parted with it to an American, ^^ ho set 
it up, as has been described, on the right 
bank of the Mississi]>pi. 

Many a visitor an ho has stood before the 
28 



Louisiana Under Spain 

pictures has expressed the feeling : " Superb, 
but how incongruous ! These portraits be- 
long at Versailles. What appropriateness is 
there in displaying them here in free Amer- 
ica?" 

A little thought, however, will suffice to 
convince one that this beam of the glory of 
the First Empire could fall nowhere else 
more appropriately than here. The spot 
thus signalized belonged to France when 
Napoleon was her master. As the most 
remote point in Louisiana, which at the 
same time was well ascertained, the Sanlt de 
St. Antoine de Padoue must have been often 
in his thoughts. It was in connection with 
the alienation of Louisiana from France that 
the imperial eagle first showed a disposition 
to soar untrammeled. In this matter the 
First Consul for the first time declared himself 
independent of the Chambers, of the old tra- 
ditions, of liis former advisers, and took the 
step which carried him to absolutism. In 
the portrait he is not yet quite emperor, but 
extends his hand toward the imperial symbol 
which is just within his grasp. So in the 
autocratic sale of Louisiana he reaches out, 

29 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

as it were, for the scepter and the purple. 
In that act he for the first time casts consti- 
tutional limitations aside and steps out as all 
powerful in the state. The portrait is an im- 
pressive souvenir of a phase in the history of 
the Mississippi Valley which is now long 
past — impressive and most appropriately 
placed. 

We may admit it regretfully, but some- 
how or other the personality in modern his- 
tory beyond all others picturesque and mag- 
netic is that of Napoleon Bonaparte ; and as 
time passes, the spell by which he binds 
mankind grows stronger rather than weaker. 
Few indeed are those who esteem him good, 
or even great in the highest sense, yet scarce- 
ly a human being can be named contempla- 
tion of whom excites such awe in the general 
mind, or who is referred to in terms so super- 
lative. M. Frederic Masson, a living writer 
of repute, holds Napoleon to have been not 
only the greatest of Frenchmen, "but that 
one among men who was nearest to what has 
been called God," and he undertakes a study of 
the Corsican's career and character on a scale 
befitting such an estimate. This seems an 

30 



Louisiana Under Spain 

outburst in its excitement grotesque and 
blasphemous : but an authority as keen and 
cool in judgment as Lord Eosebery may be 
cited, whose portrayal in his Napoleon, the 
Last Phase, the most recent book on the topic, 
presents a character unique and ultra-human 
in a way most marked. What Napoleon 
Bonaparte did in Europe we have not failed 
to recognize. Have we made it real to our- 
selves that scarcely any other human being 
has affected America so momentously ? 

Early in his career the imagination of 
Napoleon became kindled with the idea of 
building up for France a great colonial em- 
pire. His interest in the Egyptian campaign 
was in the thought that success there might 
extend the domain of France perhaps even 
as far as India. The failure in Egypt was 
utter, but his buoyant spirit was not dis- 
couraged. No sooner had the coup d''etat of 
the "eighteenth Brummre^'' November 9, 
1799, been accomplished, through which, set- 
ting aside the feeble Directory, he became 
First Consul, confirming his power the next 
year by the victory of Marengo, than he 
pushed schemes vigorously east and west for 

31 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

extending Frencli dominion. On the east, 
Massena, after a plan concerted witli the 
Russian Emperor Paul, Avas to advance by 
way of Astrakhan with 70,000 men, half 
French and half Russians, upon India. The 
Russian contingent, indeed, crossed the Vol- 
ga upon the ice on the way thither ; but the 
assassination of Paul, March 1, 1801, put a 
stop to the attempt."^ The western scheme 
Napoleon hoped to carry out with the helj) 
of Spain. 

Far the larger part of the territory of the 
United States has been won from Spain. 
The last despoilment has come in our own 
time, a taking of such dimensions that Spain 
is now almost completely shorn, her flag 
scarcely floating beyond the Iberian penin- 
sula. Perhaps S]3ain deserves all her humili- 
ations ; but the story of them is after all a 
pathetic one, and if any kindlier estimate of 
this ancient enemy, who has suffered so much 
from us, than the usual one is possible, the 
fair-minded will be glad to have it set forth. 
As regards the Spanish governors of Louisi- 
ana the line of personages, as we have seen, 

* W, M. Sloane, American Historical Review, vol. iv, p. 441. 
32 



Louisiana Under Spain 

has attractive points ; so, too, in the old 
Spain of a century ago there were men de- 
serving from us a more respectful regard 
than has been meted out.* Carlos IV, then 
king, like his father Carlos III, who died in 
1788, was a figure not uninteresting. A di- 
plomatist at his court paints him as a fairly 
worthy character, abstemious, and above re- 
proach as a husband. He was devotedly 
pious after the Catholic fashion, a man mor- 
ally correct, and of innocent tastes. He was 
a good practical mechanic, his liking being 
especially for the work of the armorer ; and 
we have an attractive picture of the king in 
a workman's dress, his sleeves rolled up to 
his shoulders, laboring daily at the forge 
with his blacksmiths. He was a great hunter 
— one of the best shots in Europe. He lived 
in good-humored companionship with his 
courtiers, hunters, and workmen, slapping 
them on the back with a good-fellowship 
sometimes a little too robust, but all well 
meant. In some ways he showed good sense ; 
but it was not often shown in public affairs, 

* Henry Adams, History of the United States during the 
Administration of Thomas Jefferson, vol. i, ch. xiii, etc. 

3 33 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

whicli he for the most part strangely neg- 
lected, leaving all to liis ministers. This 
fairly worthy monarch — chaste, temperate, 
simple, often sensible — was mated with a 
queen of character notoriously bad, whose 
lapses (it was indeed a curious society) he 
winked at, allowing her and her favorites 
to direct, more than he himself did, the 
concerns of his great empire in the two hemi- 
spheres. 

In the court there was a strange mixture 
of good and bad ; and among the favorites of 
the dissolute queen was a character, deeply 
vicious, we must believe, from all that report 
says of him, and yet who deserves some 
gratitude from America. Don Manuel Go- 
doy, a young noble of the king's guard, 
seems to have been exceptionally corrupt, 
but he possessed conspicuous ability. He 
overcame in diplomacy even such opponents 
as Talleyrand and William Pitt, and in his 
dealings with the United States was hu- 
mane and enlightened. Godoy — who, from 
a friendly understanding once brought about 
with a foreign country, gained the curious 
title " Prince of Peace," by which he is more 

34 



Louisiana Under Spain 

commonly known — was Prime Minister of 
Spain from 1792 to 1798, and negotiated a 
treaty witli the United States in 1795 which 
was much the most advantageous to us up to 
that time arranged with any foreign power. 
He may have feared an English attack. He 
conceded, at any rate, all America asked, set- 
tled in a harmonious way the boundary be- 
tween Natchez and New Orleans, and gave 
in a liberal spirit to the traders down the 
Mississii^pi " the right of deposit," the privi- 
lege of landing from the flatboats and re- 
shipping upon ocean-going craft the mer- 
chandise that sought a market in the world. 
This privilege was granted for three years, 
with hope of renewal if all went satisfac- 
torily. The Spanish attitude to the United 
States was, in fact, most friendly, though 
little appreciated then or since. Soon after, 
in the complications, Spain became hope- 
lessly dependent upon France, the king fall- 
ing into subserviency to Napoleon as his 
star began to rise. Godoy, favoring a more 
spirited policy, resigned in despair, showing 
to the last his friendship toward the United 
States. 

35 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Within six weeks of Marengo, Bonaparte, 
full of colonizing zeal, had his agents at Madrid 
laboring energetically to bring about the re- 
trocession of Louisiana to France, the great 
province alienated by Louis XV in 1762. 
A glorious New France was to be built up 
beyond the sea, and for three years the First 
Consul pursued the scheme with ardor. Side 
by side with the desire to aggrandize appears 
a purpose to restrain the United States, 
whose hopeful prospects were contemplated 
in no friendly spirit. In August, 1800, Ber- 
thier, the instrument of Bonaparte in so 
much of his most vigorous effort, became 
minister at Madrid, and under his hand the 
form of the treaty grew definite. France 
was to have Louisiana, and also the two 
Floridas, while the consideration to Spain 
was to be a kingdom of at least a million 
people made up out of French conquests in 
the north of Italy, over which was to be set 
the Duke of Parma, husband of the infanta, 
the daughter of Carlos IV. This treaty ne- 
gotiated by Berthier, dated October 1, 1800, 
Mr. Adams pronounces to be one of the most 
interesting documents in the history of the 

36 



Louisiana Under Spain 

United States, for it is the source of our title 
to Louisiana; all subsequent arrangements 
were but modifications of this. Charles IV 
refused the surrender of the two Floridas, 
but with that exception all went as France 
wished, the Spanish king and queen, intent 
upon a fine settlement for the infanta, be- 
ing overjoyed at the bargain. The king, 
however, did not ratify the arrangement 
as yet. 

At first the treaty was kept secret, Tal- 
leyrand, the First Consul's Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, as he had been the Directory's, not 
hesitating to deny it when pressed by the 
American envoy, who had got wind of the 
matter. On December 3, 1800, came Mo- 
reau's victory of Hohenlinden, which put 
France more than ever on the apex. Early 
in 1801, Lucien Bonaparte, brother of Na- 
poleon and six years younger, succeeded Ber- 
thier at Madrid. He was independent in 
character and intelligent, but, as it appeared, 
not above corruption. He was very young, 
and perhaps did not realize how easily a 
gift may become a bribe. He had helped 
his brother to seize power on the eighteenth 

37 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Brumaire^ using his position as President of 
tlie Council of Five Hundred to further the 
scheme. He had been in youth an ardent 
Jacobin, and never became subservient to the 
autocracy which his brother was presently to 
establish. For the time being, however, he 
was in harmony with the First Consul, and 
in his present task was set to face no other 
than Godoy, who, though no longer Prime 
Minister, had been found indispensable and 
was really the power behind the throne. 
With a frank arrogance which has some 
justification, Godoy declares in his Memoii^s 
that he had been recalled to power because 
he was the only man able to cope with Na- 
poleon, who was then trying to occupy Spain 
with a French army under pretext of a war 
with Portugal On March 21, 1801, Lucien 
negotiated at San Ildefonso, the residence of 
the Spanish court, a new treaty, which did 
little more than deepen and emphasize that 
of the preceding October. In return for the 
elevation of the Duke of Parma to the sover- 
eignty of Tuscany, the retrocession of Loui- 
siana to France was to be at once carried 
out. But, as before, the king's signature 

38 



Louisiana Under Spain 

was withlield ; and Godoy baffled Napoleon's 
other scheme of occupying Spain by making 
an arrangement with Portugal ^vhich Lucien 
was won over to approve by an extravagant 
gift. Lucien confessed that he secured twen- 
ty fine pictures, and diamonds worth 100,000 
crowns. He seems also to have been gorged 
with other wealth, so that he became the 
richest member of his family. 

That Napoleon was foiled thus by the 
address of Godoy and the venality of his 
brother Lucien was not the only embarrass- 
ment which he now encountered. The assas- 
sination just at this time of the Emperor 
Paul of Russia set against him that important 
power, the scheme of Massena's invasion of 
India at once coming to naught ; while Nel- 
son's victory at Copenhagen, on A^Dril 9tli, 
took from him the Danish fleet on whose aid 
he had counted. He angrily demanded im- 
mediate possession of Louisiana; but Godoy, 
as Mr. Adams says, cool and adroit as a pica- 
dor maneuvering before a maddened bull, 
held back the province on the plea that the 
Italian stipulation had not been scrupulously 
fulfilled. Said Bonaparte a little later to the 

39 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Spanish minister at Paris : " You act toward 
tlie French republic as you might act toward 
San Marino." * If the Prince of Peace could 
help it, Spain was to be saved humiliation at 
the hands of France. 

* Napoleon Correspoudance. 



40 



CHAPTER III 

FKANCE PEEPAEES TO TAKE LOUISIANA 

As the moment approaches for the resig- 
nation by Spain of the province she had held 
so many years, it will be interesting to give 
some outlines of the picture presented by 
McMaster-^ of the land and the principal 
town. From the little posts near the mouth of 
the Missouri, and from Sainte Genevieve and 
New Madrid farther down-stream, scarcely a 
hamlet, on the west bank, met the eye of the 
boatman as he floated down until he arrived 
at Pointe Coupee. From this point planta- 
tions and villages succeeded one another until 
New Orleans was reached. To the men from 
the North there was much to wonder at — the 
great river flowing for hundreds of miles 
without a tributary, and at length within its 
levees, pouring on, high above the level of 

*Eristory of the People of the United States, vol. iii, 
pp. 15, etc. 

41 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

the fields on either hand ; the bayous full, on 
a sunny day, of basking alligators ; cypresses, 
palmettos, live-oaks, their branches huug ^vith 
moss ; pelicans and buzzards ; houses without 
cellars, and cemeteries in which there was no 
grave. The town had been laid out in Bien- 
ville's time by the Sieur de la Tour. On 
three sides ran a low rampart, the fourth 
being open to the stream. From the Gate of 
France on the north to the Gate of Tchoupit- 
oulas on the south was a mile, and precisely 
in the middle was the great square, the Place 
d'Armes. The streets, narrow, crossing at 
right angles, were named for the ]^rinces and 
nobles of France, but were squalid and with- 
out drainage. The Creoles went in and out 
through the gates, liable always to the chal- 
lenge of sentries. But outside the ramparts, 
particularly in the Faubourg Sainte Marie, to 
the south, was a tm^bulent population of 
strangers ; here it was mainly that the Ameri- 
cans found quarter as they landed from the 
"broadhorns" that had brou2:ht them from 
afar. Near here, too, were many seagoing 
shij)s, lying sometimes three deep along the 
levee. The trade had become large at the 

42 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 

time of the purchase, the exports amount- 
ing to $2,000,000 in value, and the imports 
to°$2,500,000. 

In the bustling business life the levee was 
the great exchange, piled high with bales and 
boxes, and the scene of bargammg. There 
was a theater ; and music and dancing had a 
large place among all classes, from the pure 
French and Spaniards, down through mula- 
toes of every gradation of shade to the cod- 
black negroes, who did the rougher work, often 
under compulsion of the lash. The colored 
people were generally slaves. Over all pre- 
sided the "Cabildo,"city council, composed 
of six hereditary "regidors," two "a cades, 
and the governor. One regidor was alferez 
royal," and bore the king's banner; another 
J, '"alguazil," mayor; and others were 
Treasurers and collectors. The "alcaldes' 
had special dignity, being judges, and never 
appearing in public without their wands of 
Xe Each night an alcalde, with the al- 
guazil and a scrivener, walked the stree s to 
fee that the laws were obeyed and that all wa 
well On the eves of Christmas, Easter, and 
Pentecost the governor and alcaldes went 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

the rounds of tlie prisons, sometimes setting 
free culprits confined for petty offenses ; but 
stern often was the justice meted out to tlie 
criminal. If he had reviled the Savior or the 
Blessed Virgin, his property was confiscated 
and his tongue cut out. If he had vilified the 
king or queen, half his property was taken and 
he was flogged. If he had stolen the sacred 
vessels from a holy place, or robbed a traveler, 
or committed a murder, or assaulted a woman, 
he was put to death. 

No sooner did a craft draw up to the river- 
bank than it was visited by a " syndic," who 
made severe scrutiny of captain, crew, and 
cargo. Along the highways, too, were officers 
who interrogated sharply every passer. Tax, 
restriction, penalty, weighed upon everything, 
the governor, and the intendant, an officer set 
to oversee civil functions, being in general 
responsible for the administration. It was a 
system stately and ceremonious in a high 
degree ; also cumbrous, clumsy, oppressive — 
pervaded with a mildew of medieval tra- 
dition. A Latin people might tolerate it — 
indeed sit with a fair degree of comfort under 
its provisions. It had become inevitable now 

M 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 

that it should touch the Anglo-Saxon, as the 
young republic pressed and grew restless 
against its barriers on every side. Out of the 
contact there could, of course, come but one 
result. 

In the fall of 1801 came peace with Eng- 
land, and the First Consul was free, as he 
had not been before, to pursue his great 
schemes for internal improvement, and also 
his colonial policy. Louisiana was in his 
thoughts, but before he could enter upon 
the American continent there was a matter 
on the threshold of that continent which 
must be seen to. Here he stumbled, and 
that stumbling on the threshold, since it 
brought the downfall of his wider plans, 
must receive some notice here. San Do- 
mingo, under the old regime the most im- 
portant colony of France, had at this mo- 
ment practically fallen away from her. Only 
the western end of the beautiful island was 
French ; but when the Revolution broke out, 
in 1789, nearly two-thirds of the commercial 
interests of France centered here. The island 
had a population of 600,000, five-sixths of 
whom were negroes of full blood. Of mu- 

45 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

lattoes there were 50,000; of white Creoles 
an equal number ; and to the latter belonged 
all political and social advantages. Under 
the old rule trade restrictions had been rigid, 
and the Creoles welcomed at first the Eevo- 
lution with its freer policy ; but, taking alarm 
when the mulattoes received recognition, they 
became in the end ardent loyalists. The spirit 
of freedom with which the air was filled pene- 
trated still deeper, until in August, 1791, the 
vast black multitude rose ag:ainst their mas- 
ters, involving the island in ruin and death. 
Their liberty was at last granted, for in 1794 
the National Assembly abolished slavery. At 
this time rose into prominence one of the re- 
markable figures of history, the most distin- 
guished character of the negro race, Toussaint 
L'Ouverture. 

Toussaint was a thorough black, son of a 
slave born in Africa, who was the son of a 
chief ; the date of Toussaint's birth is given 
as 1746. He grew up a slave in the Spanish 
part of the island. Now, grizzled but vigor- 
ous, at the head of 4,000 blacks, he cleared 
out his old masters in the interest of the 
freedom-offering French. His new friends 

46 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 



made liini general-of-brigade, and in May, 
1797, general-in-cliief. One halts before the 
enthusiasm of Wendell Phillips, in whose im- 
passioned portrayal Toussaint was made to 
appear almost the first 
of heroes ; but it is im- 
possible to think of 
the negro chief with- 
out admiration. He 
is described as well- 
meaning and ordinari- 
ly gentle, of command- 
ing ability, indefati- 
gable, and possessed 
of splendid ambitions. 
He was sometimes fero- 
cious, but he had feroc- 
ity to meet. He was 
wily, but he had wiles 
and treachery to meet, and came to ruin at 
last through overtrustfulness. The whites 
he had cherished and protected: through 
them he found a dungeon and the grave of 
an exile. As the career of Toussaint affected 
America, becoming an important factor in 
deciding for us that Louisiana should come 
47 




z^^^^^:^;^^^;^/^^-^^^ 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

to the United States, it is in place to give 
him some study. 

When in 1798 France and the United 
States were on the brink of war, Toussaint 
was practically dictator in his island. Not 
heeding the nominal ties that bound him to 
France, he sought friendship with the United 
States, committing himself to the most am- 
icable relations. He had, no doubt, a crown 
in his thoughts, which, with our help, he 
might hope to gain. But his passion was for 
freedom for himself and his fellow-blacks ; 
and he had the gravest reasons for distrusting 
the attitude of France in this regard. He 
beat down all opposition, casting into prison 
the French agent. He made himself absolute 
master of the whole island, his power backed 
up by 20,000 disciplined troops ; and now as 
the First Consul strode upon the scene the 
rebel negro confronted him defiantly from 
the ruins and ashes in which the ancient 
French colony had disappeared. 

October 1, 1801,"^ Bonaparte orders Ber- 
thier to announce to General Le Clerc his 
appointment to command the great expedi- 

* Napoleon Corrcspondance. 

48 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 

tion to San Domingo, and we find also Au- 
gereau and St. Cyr, oflScers of distinction, 
concerned in pressing the embarkation. Le 
Clerc was a soldier of mucli skill and experi- 
ence, husband of Pauline Bonaparte, and, as 
the letters show, much cherished by his 
great brother-in-law. Le Clerc was to be 
powerfully supported, for the First Consul 
had no thought of submitting to the loss of 
the fine province. Almost at the same time, 
November 18, 1801, he wrote to Toussaint in 
terms most friendly and flattering : " What 
do you desire ? the liberty of the blacks ? 
You know that wherever we have been we 
give it to those who have it not. Tell them 
if liberty seems the greatest good, they can 
enjoy it only by becoming French citizens." * 
As the sequel proved, this was but a lying 
pretense. The whole dealing of Bonaparte 
with Toussaint is perhaps the blackest part 
of his career. He meant to win back the 
island with slavery restored. He meant also 
to crush democratic ideas if he could, and 
saw in Toussaint's empire a bulwark of re- 
publicanism as established in the United 

* Napoleon Correspondance. 

4 49 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

States. No one in the United States appre- 
ciated the situation. Jefferson came in, a 
man of peace, determined to be friendly to 
France. Support was withdrawn from Tons- 
saint ; he was left to face his danger alone. 

In January, 1802, Le Clerc appeared with 
a great fleet and army, and was met at once 
as an enemy. The war was sharp and swift, 
and was not intermitted, though Toussaint 
himself disappears. Relying upon the honor 
of his foes, in the hope that good might come 
to his cause by surrender, he gave himself up. 
Thereupon he was treacherously conveyed to 
France, to die within the year of pneumonia 
in a casemate of the fortress of Joux, in the 
bleak Jura region. Coeval with his deporta- 
tion from the island came the decree that the 
blacks whom the National Assembly had set 
free in 1794, and to whom the First Consul 
had promised freedom in the preceding No- 
vember, should be again reduced to slavery. 

But Bonaparte was far enough from hav- 
ing won the game. Toussaint had capable 
j^upils, who, though not equal to the French 
in the open field, carried on irregular warfare 
from the forests and mountains most effect- 

60 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 

ively ; and, now that their leader was gone, 
gave rein to the ferocity which belonged to 
them as savages. Presently stood at their 
side a terrible ally, the yellow fever ! The 
pestilence devoured far more than the sword 
devoured, until, as the summer ended, Le 
Clerc was forced to report that scarcely a 
seventh of his army remained. In November 
the general followed his legions into the sep- 
ulcher, and the cause of the French became 
hopeless. 

In the summer Bonaparte's hopes of suc- 
cess in San Domingo had been high. He 
wrote to Le Clerc * that everything was going 
well elsewhere. "Eid us of these gilded 
Africans," he said — having in mind Toussaint 
and his lieutenants — " and we shall have noth- 
ing more to desire." A little earlier f he had 
written to his Minister of Marine, Decres : 
" My intention is to take possession of Louisi- 
ana in the shortest time possible." The ex- 
pedition was to be prepared with the greatest 
secrecy, and pretense was to be made that it 
was a reenf orcement for San Domingo. " Let 
me know," continues the First Consul, " the 

* Correspondance, July 1, 1803. f June 4, 1802. 

51 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

number of men you think necessary, both in- 
fantry and artillery. Present me a plan for 
organizing the colony, both military and civil, 
for works, fortifications, etc. Make a map of 
the coast from St. Augustine to Mexico, and 
a geographical description of the different 
cantons of Louisiana, with the population 
and resources of each." A month later,* 
he writes both to Berthier and Decres as to 
details. There are at once to be assembled 
at Dunkirk five battalions of infantry of the 
54th and l7th regiments, two companies of 
artillery, sixteen pieces of cannon, and three 
thousand muskets, to be under command of a 
general of division who shall have under him 
three brigadiers, the whole to set sail early in 
November after the equinoctial storms. The 
large proportion of officers no doubt indicates 
that the force w^as to serve as a nucleus to be 
increased largely from the population of Louisi- 
ana. No doubt, too, it was thought fitting 
that the captain-general should have a retinue 
of dignity. To hold this high position Bona- 
parte at first named Bernadotte, who already 
had great distinction, the appointment pos- 

* August 4, 1803. 
52 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 

sibly being made that a dangerous rival might 
be got out of the way. Bernadotte, however, 
made inconvenient conditions, whereupon he 
was named minister to the United States ; 
that position, too, he never assumed, although 
he was on the brink of sailing for America. 

The commander finally settled u]3on for 
Louisiana was the impetuous Victor, who in 
the late summer and fall of 1802 pressed en- 
ergetically the preparations for departure. 
As one encounters these historic names, fa- 
mous marshals of the Empire as they after- 
ward became, it is interesting to mark how 
easily their destinies might have been differ- 
ent. But for the intervention of a Russian 
assassin, Massena would have marched upon 
India through the passes of the Himalayas 
with 70,000 men. The news of a coming 
European war kept Bernadotte in France ; 
and Victor, almost on shipboard, was at the 
last moment needed elsewhere. So they pass 
on to Austerlitz, to Jena, to Wagram, to 
Moscow and Leipsic, becoming duke, prince, 
or king in the great new ordering of Europe, 
now close at hand. 

Still another of these imperial satellites 
53 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

about-to-be just at tliis time played a part in 
the development of this American incident. 
The treaty of retrocession, first arranged by 
Berthier in 1800, and confirmed during Lu- 
cien's term in 1801, had not as yet, mainly 
through the tenacity of Godoy, received the 
signature of the king, which alone could make 
it valid. Even now, though Spain was pros- 
trate, Carlos IV held back ; pressure must be 
brought to bear ; and the First Consul used 
as his instrument the able Gouvion St. Cyr. 
Not until October 15, 1802, did the king 
yield, and only then after exacting most defi- 
nite conditions. 1. The new kingdom of 
Etruria, as the Italian appanage of the in- 
fanta and her husband was to be called, must 
be distinctly recognized by Austria, England, 
and the dethroned Duke of Tuscany, whose 
lost territory was incorporated in the new do- 
main. 2. France must pledge herself not to 
alienate Louisiana, and to restore it to Sj)ain 
in case the King of Etruria should lose his 
power. These two things Talleyrand, Minister 
of Foreign Aifairs, solemnly promised, St. Cyr 
giving a written pledge in the name of the 
First Consul. The whole coast of the Gulf 

54 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 

of Mexico was to be included in tlie cession, 
from St. Marys, on the Atlantic, to the Kio 
Bravo, now the Rio Grande, the boundary of 
Mexico. Bonaparte was to have what Spain 
had received from France, the understanding 
being that what is now Texas was to be in- 
cluded, and in the far Northwest an extension 
to the Pacific. An outline containing these 
claims, unsigned, but probably the work of 
Barbe-Marbois, Secretary of the Treasury, 
still exists in the archives of France.* The 
United States, at whose "usurpations over 
Spain " Bonaparte professed to be indignant, 
was to be entirely shut off. The lucrative 
commercial relations between the Union and 
the French West Indies were to come to an 
end, the plan being that Louisiana alone 
should furnish the supplies. Bonaparte had 
labored and planned for it through three 
long years, to meet at last colossal failure. 

The story has reached the point where the 
United States must be taken into account. 
The administration of John Adams, during 
which the Federalists, leaning strongly toward 

* W. M. Sloane, American Historical Review, iv, 445. 

55 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

England, nearly involved tlie country in a 
war with tlie French Directory, came to an 
end March 4, 1801, and a new iigure sat in 
the President's chair. ^' For eight years this 
tall, loosely built, somewhat stiff iigure, in 
red waistcoat and yarn stockings, slippers 
down at the heel, and clothes that seemed too 
small for him, may be imagined . . . sitting 
on one hip, with one shoulder high above 
the other, talking almost without ceasing 
to his visitors at the White House. His skin 
was thin, peeling from his face on exposure 
to the sun, and giving it a tettered appear- 
ance. This sandy face, with hazel eyes and 
sunny aspect — this loose, shackling person — 
this rambling and often brilliant conversa- 
tion — belong to the controlling influences of 
American history. . . . Jeff erson's personality 
during those eight years appeared to be the 
Government ! " '^ 

Jefferson had scarcely suspected the in- 
trigue of France for the retrocession of Loui- 
siana. He was in his notions a disci23le of 
Eousseau ; had been an ardent sympathizer 
with the French Revolution, whose begin- 

* Ilenry Adams, History of the U. S., etc., i, 187. 

56 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 

nine: lie had witnessed close at hand, and had 
been scarcely estranged by the later excesses. 
Though with the eighteenth JBrumaire, the 
establishment of the consulship, republicanism 
had practically come to an end in France, he, 
like the world in general, could not see it at 
once, the First Consul being a quantity quite 
unknown. The new President began with a 
favorable disposition not only toward France, 
but also toward Spain, her ally. He believed 
that the recent troubles with France were 
due to the Federalists, and that a frank and 
trustful policy would set matters right. Of 
course, in these ideas he was quite out of 
sympathy with a large division of the party 
which had elected him. The West and South 
hated the Spaniards ; and when it developed, 
as was presently the case, that France was 
scheming for the retrocession of Louisiana, 
they grew wild with alarm, believing that 
their strait as to the navigation of the Missis- 
sippi would be closer than ever. A new 
minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, 
sailed in August, 1801. By this time the 
effort for the retrocession had become well 
ascertained ; but even now any bad intention 

57 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

toward the United States was not suspected 
by tlie administration, and Madison, Secretary 
of State, sent mild instructions to the foreign 
envoys. 

Livingston, soon after arriving at Paris, 
sharply interrogated Talleyrand on the sub- 
ject, who denied that any retrocession had 
taken place. The arch dissimulator really told 
no lie here, for, as we have just seen, the signa- 
ture of the King of Spain to the treaty had 
not yet been affixed. News of Talleyrand's 
denial reached Jefferson at the same time with 
a letter from Rufus King, Minister to England, 
who forwarded a coj^y of the unratified agree- 
ment formulated in the spring at San Ilde- 
fonso between Godoy and Lucien Bonaparte. 
Jeff erson now became convinced, much against 
his will, that a quarrel with France was immi- 
nent. But for the delays imposed upon the 
First Consul, first by Godoy, who would not 
yield Louisiana until every condition had 
been fulfilled, and secondly by Toussaint and 
his followers, who balked the French in San 
Domingo, General Victor might at this time 
have been setting in order a threatening for- 
eign host at New Orleans. 

68 



France Prepares to Take Louisiana 

By this time there were many signs of a 
heavy tempest. It had become known that 
Le Clerc at once upon arriving in San 
Domingo had shown unfriendliness to Ameri- 
cans, seizing their property and stigmatizing 
them as 'Hhe scum of nations." Pichon, an 
old Eepublican, minister at Washington, who, 
not prepared for the new order, tried to ex- 
plain and adjust, was re- 
buked from home and pres- 
ently dismissed. The letters 
of Livingston reported cav- 
alier treatment. On both 
sides temper was rising. 
While Talleyrand was su- 
percilious in Paris, Le Clerc 
was angry in the West In- 
dies. On the other hand, Jct^na MuUiiov, 
Livingston's blood was up, 
and even the peace-loving Madison was los- 
ing his calm. As it became known in the 
country that France was likely to replace 
Spain at the mouth of the Mississippi, and 
that she was by no means a good friend, a 
warlike murmur arose, particularly through- 
out the West and South. 

59 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Amid such mutterings Jefferson bore hini- 
self well. Following his bent, he still tried 
to be conciliatory, but at the same time there 
was a show of spirit. If France persisted in 
taking Louisiana, he wrote Bonaparte, it would 
cost her a war, perhaps soon, which would 
annihilate her on the ocean, and place that 
element under the despotism of two nations — 
"which I am not reconciled to the more 
because my own would be one of them." To 
Livingston he wrote : " From the moment that 
France takes New Orleans, we must marry 
ourselves to the British fleet and nation." 
Mr. Adams believes that there was a touch 
of bluster about this, which Jefferson thought 
in the circumstances might be politic. He 
was too peace-loving to be sincere in it. But 
when Bonaparte was the one to be frightened, 
and Talleyrand the one to be hoodwinked, the 
nawete of the proceeding becomes rather 
ludicrous. 



60 



CHAPTER IV 

HOW JEFFEESON BUILDED BETTER THAN HE 
KNEW 

Near the end of 1802 news arrived whicli 
aggravated the public excitement. Morales, 
intendant or civil officer at New Orleans, 
abrogated the right of deposit, closing abso- 
lutely the Mississippi to the United States. 
The right had been enjoyed since the treaty 
of 1795. It had been granted at that time 
for three years ; though this term had expired 
four years before, the arrangement had been 
suffered to continue. Under this the west- 
ern traders, unhampered, paying a moderate 
charge for storage, had been able to lay down 
and reship at New Orleans the merchandise 
brought from the interior. To be sure, the 
Spanish governor, Salcedo, disavowed the act, 
but the intendant was quite indejDendent 
of him. The restriction continued, and the 

61 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

course of Morales was universally taken in 
America to portend what must be borne when 
France took hold. War now seemed inevi- 
table, the Federalists chuckling at the pros- 
pect. Their great opponent — so fond of 
France, so cool toward England, so naively- 
peace-loving that he had conceived the idea 
of laying up under cover as useless, side by 
side, the few little frigates that formed our 
entire navy — would be forced after all to fight, 
adopting the identical policy which they had 
laid down. 

But Jefferson extricated himself, his own 
dexterity being favored by extraordinary good 
fortune. '' Peace is our passion," w^as one of 
his exclamations. Peace he preserved, strik- 
ing into a neutral policy which was entirely 
successful. For the moment no action was 
taken. Meantime the trouble worked toward 
a solution. The Spanish minister at Wash- 
ington, Yrujo — an interesting young man, 
brave and able, though quick-tempered and 
vain, the son-in-law of a prominent Jeffer- 
sonian, and through his American wife very 
much of a Kepublican — now vigorously de- 
clared that the act of Morales was unauthor- 

62 



How JefFerson Builded 

ized, and despatched to him a letter of re- 
buke. This, when known, had a pacific 
effect. A letter from Salcedo, governor of 
Louisiana, repudiating also the action of Mo- 
rales, when laid before Congress quieted war- 
like feeling there. The West and South, 
however, continued to be up in arms, demand- 
ing that a force should proceed southward 
forthwith, with the view of seizing New Or- 
leans at the first sign of the French advance. 
This discontent of the West and South af- 
fected Jefferson strongly, and it was no doubt 
mainly in order to put an end to this that he 
now took such action as he did. As a man 
of the "tide- water" region of Virginia, the 
world beyond the Alleghanies seemed to him 
very far away. It Avas not easy for him to 
feel that this free navigation of the Missis- 
sippi was so very important, at any rate in 
comparison with the interests of the Atlantic 
coast ; and as regards the great unknown re- 
gion west of the Mississippi, the unexplored 
wilderness of Louisiana, he no doubt was 
quite indifferent, if, indeed, he di-d not regard 
it with dread. Madison is on record as be- 
lieving that emigration west of the river 

63 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

would be detrimental ; that settlers should 
remain on the eastern side ; not " dilute popu- 
lation " by spreading too mdely. To occupy 
that unknown desert — such it was believed 
to be in great part — would most unwisely 
^' slacken concentration " and be a certain pro- 
moter of disunion sentiments. It was a ne- 
cessity that the w^est bank should be under a 
separate government. These views of his 
secretary the President probably shared. 
What he felt in the exigency was the turbu- 
lent ill-humor of the frontier people ; that he 
must find some means to allay, though the 
deep reasons for that ill -humor impressed him 
but little. He hit upon an effective scheme 
to carry out his desire ; and as it developed, 
the fates so ruled that he builded far, far 
wiser than he knew. 

Jeiferson's expedient to quiet the West 
and South was to appoint a special envoy, a 
man well and favorably known, with $2,000,- 
000 in hand, authorized to proceed to Euro]3e, 
and buy outright 'New Orleans and Florida. 
This envoy was James Monroe, a good soldier 
of the Eevolution, who since then had played 
a part in Congress, also as Minister to France 

64 



How Jefferson Builded 

and as governor of Virginia. Tlie French 
envoy, too, at this juncture wrote a remon- 
strance to the First Consul, and used his in- 
fluence also in Louisiana to do away with the 
interdict of Morales. All these facts becom- 
ing known, impatience subsided, and the ex- 
cited communities grew calm enough to wait 
for the outcome. Monroe's instructions were 
definitely laid down : 1. He was to purchase, 
if possible, New Orleans and the Floridas, 
and he might expend up to $10,000,000 
rather than lose the chance. 2. Should 
France refuse to sell even the site for a town, 
the old right of deposit, as granted in 1795, 
was to be tried for. Should that fail, further 
instructions were to be w aited for ; Jeif erson, 
apparently, was determined to pull still an- 
other string rather than go to war. Besides 
the money, an offer of commercial privileges 
for ten years was to be made to the sellers ; 
incorporation with full privileges into the 
Union was promised to the people of the 
districts to be ceded„ The west bank of the 
river, too, was to be guaranteed, if necessary, 
to France. AVhat our generation sees to have 
been a thing of inestimable importance, was 
5 65 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

outlined only in the faintest way in tlie back- 
ground of the consciousness of those negotia- 
tors of 1803, and so far as it was noticed at 
all, regarded only with aversion. Eeally, to 
satisfy the American administration. Bona 
parte needed only to disavow the act of Mo 
rales, and restore and guarantee the condi 
tions of 1795. Jefferson was indeed short 
sighted, but no more so than everybody else 
Livingston once or twice, as will be shown 
hereafter, recommends to Talleyrand, for the 
sake of France, the cession to the United 
States of the country "north of the Arkan- 
sas." These are probably the only references 
of that kind that can be found in the pub- 
lic utterances of that time ; in making them 
he put himself quite outside the sympathy 
both of the American Government and of 
the people. 

When the negotiation was over, indeed, 
there was from Livingston a notable out- 
burst, which we shall in good time consider. 

Jefferson, in his policy at this time, was 
thought by the envoys of France and Eng- 
land at Washington, and also by many of his 
own countrymen, to be weak and pusillani- 

6Q 



How Jefferson Builded 

mous. The simple fact was that he loved 
peace, and was determined to preserve it if 
possible. He showed really great moral 
courage and strength of character in main- 
taining so steadfastly, in that age so prone to 
weapon-wielding, his noble attitude. His 
policy was destined to be successful far be- 
yond anything that he or any one could 
have anticipated for it ; but when Monroe set 
sail, March 8, 1803, the omens were dark. 
Though Victor and his soldiers delayed, a 
civil official, M. Laussat, a busy man, formerly 
in the Convention, whose name one often en: 
counters as he turns over old files of the 
Moniteur^ arrived in New Orleans, March 
26, 1803, and promptly set to work to pre- 
pare for the French occupation. He allayed 
the fears of the Creoles on the point of slavery 
by making known a recent law of the French 
Republic maintaining slavery and the slave- 
trade. In other ways he sought to arouse a 
disposition favorable to a change, a task by 
no means difficult. The President had small 
hopes of success in his negotiations, and was 
already anxiously considering with his Cabi- 
net what might be done with England in case 

67 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

France proved obdurate. The most Living- 
ston had been able to say from Paris was, 
''Do not absolutely despair." Meantime a 
resolution was offered by 
the Federalist Senator Ross, 
of Pennsylvania, in Con- 
gress, looking toward the 
immediate seizure of New 
y/^ Orleans by force; $5,000,- 
000 were to be put into the 
hands of the Executive, and 
50,000 men were to be set 
in motion before the French 
had time to arrive. The 
project was discussed in both Houses in secret 
session, Gouverneur Morris, who had had bet- 
ter opportunities to know France than per- 
haps any other American, especially favor- 
ing it. 

But the fates were working for America. 
In these early weeks of 1803 a disappointment 
was coming home to Bonaparte, bitter and 
heavy enough to have overcome any one but 
a Titan. His plans for a colonial empire, so 
dear to him, so long cherished, so powerfully 
pushed, were failing utterly. His own cam- 

68 




How Jefferson Builded 

paign in Egypt and tlie project for the great 
invasion of India by Massena had first come 
to naught ; now his schemes in the Occident 
were meeting with disaster. In San Domingo 
general and army had perished under the 
weapons of the blacks and the stroke of pes- 
tilence. Victor's army, prepared for Louisi- 
ana, it had been necessary to send to that 
abiding-place of death to recruit in some de- 
gree the ranks out of Avhich the troops had 
dropped. Moreover, the gloom of a mighty 
European struggle, certain to begin in the 
near future, was now gathering not obscurely. 
Whatever agony of mind the First Consul 
may have felt over this ruin of his projects, 
he gave little or no sign of suffering. Prompt 
and buoyant, as if nothing had happened, he 
abandoned his old path, and, to the surprise 
of those about him and the world at large, 
dashed with all his energy into a new course. 
Probably the first symptom that can be 
fixed upon of the First Consul's change was 
the appearance in the Moniteur of January 
30, 1803, of the report of his emissary Sebas- 
tiani on the Military Condition of the East, 
which was the alarm to En2:land that the 

69 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

peace of Amiens was about to be broken. 
On February 20tli there was in the First Con- 
suFs annual message a still further menace 
against England ; and on March 1 2th oc- 
curred in the drawing-room of Josephine the 
memorable scene which was practically a 
declaration of war. Livingston interrupts a 
letter to Jefferson of this date, as he says, 
"to attend Madame Bonaparte's drawing- 
room, where a circumstance happened of 
sufficient importance to merit your atten- 
tion. After the First Consul had gone the 
circuit of one room, he turned to me and 
made some of the common inquiries usual on 
these occasions. . . . When he quitted me he 
passed most of the other ministers merely with 
a bow, went up to Lord Whit worth (British 
ambassador), and after the first civilities 
said: ^I find your nation wants war again.' 
L. W. ; ^ No, sir, we are very desirous of 
peace.' First Consul: ^You have just fin- 
ished a war of fifteen years.' L. W. : ^ It 
is true, sir, and that was fifteen years too 
long.' Consul : * But you want another war 
of fifteen years.' L. W. : ^ Pardon me, sir, 
we are very desirous of peace.' Consul : ^ I 

70 



How Jefferson Builded 

must either have Malta or war ! ' L. W. : ^ I 
am not prepared, sir, to speak on that sub- 
ject; and I can only assure you, Citizen 
First Consul, that we wish for peace. . . .' 
Bowing hastily to the company, he retired 
immediately to his Cabinet without entering 
the other rooms. ... It is, then, highly prob- 
able that a new rupture will take place, since 
it is hardly possible that the First Consul 
would commit himself so publicly unless his 
determination had been taken." * 

Just at this juncture Toussaint L'Ouver- 
ture coughed his life away in the bleak case- 
mate of the fortress of Joux, in the Jura 
Mountains, the leader of the men who had 
thwarted Bonaparte's grasp after a western 
empire. It is not strange, says Adams, that 
Bonaparte should have soon forgotten the 
" miserable negro " ; " but race prejudice alone 
has blinded the American people to the debt 
they owe to the desperate courage of 500,000 
Haitian negroes who would not be enslaved." 

We fortunately possess a most graphic 
portrayal, by the hand of a brother of Napo- 

* Annals of Congress, 1803-1803, Appendix, p. 1115. 

71 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

leon, of the First Consul at tlie moment 
wlien lie decides upon parting with Louisi- 
ana. Probably there is no more vivid picture 
extant of Napoleon " in undress," very liter- 
ally so. The account possesses the utmost 
interest in the story of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase, and should be much better known 
than it is. 

Next to Napoleon the ablest of the Bona- 
parte brothers is said to have been Lucien, 
who, some years younger than the First Con- 
sul, in 1803 but twenty-eight, had neverthe- 
less been for some time a famous man. 
Though in 1801 he had accepted the gifts of 
Godoy, and so laid himself open to the charge 
of venality, his life on the whole w^as respect, 
able. He married as his heart dictated in- 
stead of bending to his brother's will, though 
his independence cost him a kingdom ; and 
preferred exile with comparative obscurity 
to the gilded chains he might have worn in 
company with Joseph, Louis, and Jerome, at 
the wheels of Napoleon's imperial car.* In 
connection with the sale of Louisiana to the 

* Joseph became King of Spain ; Louis, King of Holland ; 
Jerome, King of Westphalia. 

72 



How Jefferson Builded 

United States there exists in his Memoires * 
a detailed account of a curious quarrel be- 
tween Napoleon on the one hand and Joseph 
and Lucien on the other. The story has every 
internal evidence of truth and is dramatic 
in a high degree. Rather strangely, the story 
as a whole seems never to have been trans- 
lated, though in abridged form it has now 
and then appeared. 

Lucien, referring to the eighteenth Bru- 
maire^ November 9, 1799, when he as Presi- 
dent of the Council of Five Hundred played 
a part in the overthrow of the Directory, 
exclaims : " How many lovers of liberty have 
regarded me as an accomplice in my famous 
brother's apostasy, the consequences of which 
were so sad for me ! By no means. Unfor- 
tunately, my brother did not hold fast to the 
republicanism to which his spirit in early 
youth was devoted. Yet I have often wit- 
nessed the struggle it cost him to free him- 
self from that early passion, and I do not 
hesitate to cite as some palliation of my 
brother's backsliding the desire of the ma- 

* Lucien Bonaparte et ses Memoires, 1775-1840, tome ii, 
Paris, Charpentier, 1882. Th. Jung. ... 

73 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

jority of Frenchmen at that time to submit 
themselves to despotism. He was not won 
over until continued assaults had been made 
upon him from the beginning of his eleva- 
tion to power. In spite of my esteem for 
Washington, I believe even he would have 
had some difficulty in keeping firm, if all his 
valiant companions-in-arms, the civil func- 
tionaries, too — in fine, the men who with him 
were co-founders of America — had insisted 
on his assuming the crown of a king or an 
emperor." 

After this preface Lucien refers to his 
embassy to Madrid in 1801, at which time 
he had been spurred on by his brother to 
conclude the treaty. " ^ Above all,' Napoleon 
had said, * don't let Louisiana go. Hold fast 
to that.' Beautiful Louisiana put at sword's 
points three of us — Joseph, the First Consul, 
and me." 

" It was on a day of a first performance at 
the Theatre Frangais. [No doubt April 6, 
1803, when the Moniteur reports that the fa- 
mous Talma for the first time played Hamlet.] 
I had come in to attend the theater from my 
place in Plessis, and going in to put off my 

74 



How Jefferson Builded 

country attire, I saw witli surprise in the 
court the carriage of my brother Joseph ; and 
learned, while going up-stairs, that he, know- 
ing my plan, had told the porter he would 
go with me to the play. I had scarcely en- 
tered the salon, where, as I heard, Joseph 
had been pacing back and forth for half an 
hour, when my brother exclaimed: ^Here 
you are at last ! I was afraid you would not 
come. You are thinking of going to the play. 
I have come to tell you news which will take 
away your desire to amuse yourself.' My 
first thought was that our mother had fallen 
ill ; but Joseph, replying quickly to my anx- 
ious ' Say quickly what's the matter,' contin- 
ued: ^You'll not believe it, but it is true. 
The General means to give up Louisiana.' 
' Bah ! who'll buy it of him ? ' ' The Ameri- 
cans.' I stood for a moment stupefied. 
^ Come, now,' said I, after a moment. ^ Suj)- 
pose this were his plan, the Chambers would 
never consent.' ^ He means to get along with- 
out their consent. That is what he said when 
I declared as you now do that the Chambers 
would not consent.' ^ What ! Did he really 
say that ? That's rather strong. No ; it's im- 

75 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

possible. It was only a bit of brag (^fan- 
faronade) for your benefit.' ' No, no/ insist- 
ed Joseph, *lie was talking very seriously. 
And, what is more, he added that this sale 
would furnish him with money for a war. 
Do you know, I begin to think he is going to 
like war too well.' 

" We talked together for some time about 
this coup d'etat which seemed to us of great 
importance. ' And all this,' said Joseph [who 
as elder brother looked down patronizingly 
on the later comers], 4s going to take place 
under the direction of this callow youngster ! ' 
For my part, I did not go so far as to believe, 
as Josex3h was inclined to do, that a revolu- 
tion would come about that w^ould set us all 
adrift at once. ^Besides,' said I, 4f the 
First Consul really has this incredible fancy 
about selling Louisiana after all he has done 
to get it, and the necessity for our having it 
that he has always talked about, for our co- 
lonial interests and even for our national dig- 
nity, how will he be able to dispense with 
the authorization of the Chambers ? Since 
the Americans on their side will, of course, 
not agree without this condition, we shall 

76 



How Jefferson Builded 

have time enougli to block the scheme by our 
parliamentary opposition — opposition based 
upon the bad effect which the mere sugges- 
tion of alienating a dependency of this im- 
portance could not fail to produce on public 
opinion ; and, if necessary, we will speak to 
him about the danger to which he would 
expose all those of his name. He ought to 
know that when the people are roused it is 
but a step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian 
rock.' 'Undoubtedly,' interrupted Joseph, 
^to any other man you might say, "If you 
do not care for yourself, have some care for 
us " ; but he vdll have slight thought for us 
however important we may think ourselves. 
Several times he said to me : " I have no chil- 
dren — so after me the deluge. You or some 
successors will fight over my tomb like the 
followers of Alexander." ' 

"I knew [continues Lucien] about this 
disposition of the First Consul, having heard 
him say about the same thing, half-joking. 
Joseph declared very resolutely that the duty 
of frank and courageous opposition was abso- 
lutely incumbent on us in the present circum- 
stances. ' If our brother actually gets it into 

77 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Lis head to sell Louisiana with as little cere, 
mony as our dear father would have shown 
in selling a vineyard, and if therefore the 
Creoles over there wake up some fine morn- 
ing good Americans, having gone to bed as 
Frenchmen the night before — what will they 
say, or rather what will they do ? ' * Never 
mind that,' said I. ^They will say little 
and do nothing, good people that they are. 
The most of them will not be sorry to belong 
to a government which certainly will not sell 
them overnight.' *A11 right,' said Joseph, 
* but will Paris be satisfied ? ' ^ Paris, I agree, 
will not gain as much ; but I believe it will 
swallow the pill without making faces, and 
will digest it still more quietly, particularly 
if the General continues hereabouts to be 
fortunate in war. If he allows himself to be 
beaten, which I do not think possible, it will 
be another thing.' ^Parhleu!^ burst out 
Joseph, ^before getting so far as that this 
Monsieur Napoleon must hear from me.' 
The name Napoleon, says Lucien, had here- 
tofore only struck my ear in my childhood, 
when our brother, the officer of artillery, was 
mentioned, and sometimes when our mother 

78 



How Jefferson Builded 

used it. [He seemed to hear it now for the 
first time as conveying an imperial sugges- 
tion.] Joseph and I were both w^rong — I in 
thinking the First Consul would not dare to 
sell Louisiana without parliamentary author- 
ization ; he in thinking that the General would 
so dare, and fearing the disasters that would 
result to the family through the wrath of the 
nation." 



79 



CHAPTER V 

NAPOLEON AND JOSEPH BONAPARTE QUAREEL 
OVER LOUISIANA 

LuciEN continues : '^ It was growing late. 
The project of going to the play was aban- 
doned, the clock striking midnight. Pedro 
brought us chocolate, a Spanish custom I had 
adopted during my embassy. Joseph for this 
time kept me company, and w^e separated after 
agreeing that I should go next morning to pay 
a visit to the First Consul, who thus far con- 
tinued to receive us familiarly. Joseph was 
to follow soon without its appearing that we 
had planned it so. I was to break the ice as 
to the Louisiana matter, though not until the 
First Consul himself had led the way to it. 
Should I be asked if Joseph had broached the 
subject to me, I was to admit it, and might 
even say that Joseph had shown alarm. I 
was to follow my own judgment in replying 

80 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

to the suggestions the First Consul might 
throw out." 

[During the night Lucien brooded over the 
matter, feeling more strongly the impolicy of 
alienating Louisiana the more he thought 
about it, but holding himself to be as insig- 
nificant as the fly on the coach- wheel as to any 
influence he could exert upon his powerful 
brother. Next morning, April 7th, Thursday :] 

" I went to the Tuileries, where I was with- 
out delay led to the First Consul's apartments, 
who was at the moment taking a bath. I 
found him in excellent humor, straightway 
launching out into a description of the per- 
foi-mance of the previous evening, which he 
had attended. He was surprised and sorry 
that we had not joined him, because Talma, 
of whom we all were very fond, had shown 
great power. Then he added with much 
bonhomie', ^You might have seen, too, that 
the Parisians always like to see me. In fact, 
I scarcely flattered myself they would ever 
become so sympathetic when I had to shoot 
them down that October day in 1795.* Ah, 

* The day when Napoleon, commanding for the Directory, 
first showed his quality. 

6 81 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

that Cul-de-sac Dauphin ! Since then I have 
seen many battle-fields of different dimensions, 
God knows. But that one in the midst of 
Paris where the dead were all Frenchmen, 
sometimes gives me bad dreams. But to 
speak of pleasanter things, do you know what 
the street- wits said? It's droll but true. That 
the Cul'de-sac Daupliin was not a close at all, 
since it led straight to the Tuileries.' ^ You 
proved it, my dear brother,' said Lucien, ^ by 
going that way to install yourself there.' 
^ That's what I meant, you may well believe. 
Ah, those queer fellows, so light and forget- 
ful ! But it's better so.' ' Yes,' I added, * good 
and ill are forgotten almost in the same de- 
gree. One might think that the waters of the 
Seine were like those of Lethe.' ^Ha! ha! 
you are always inclined to poetry. Well, I 
like that. I should be sorry to see you give 
that up entirely for politics.' ^I do not 
think,' said I, * that one stands in the way of 
the other. Not to speak of David and Solo- 
mon, who were undoubtedly poets, you your- 
self. Citizen Consul, had not poetry begun to 
charm you ? Was it not, so to speak, the first 
glow that escaped from the flame of your 

82 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

genius? Almost all statesmen, financiers ex- 
cepted, have begun by being poets. I was 
reading only the other day that the famous 
economist Turgot boasted of his fondness for 
novels.' For some unknown reason, as I re- 
member with surprise, this reference to Turgot 
did not please him. ^ Bah ! ' he exclaimed 
contemptuously. ^Turgot — Turgot!' and he 
mouthed the name so scornfully that I ha- 
stened to say what was true, that if the Citizen 
Consul had been willing to take up poetry, 
he might have shone in it as in everything 
else he had undertaken. ^ Well, yes,' said the 
First Consul, pleased, and rolling the bit of 
flattery under his tongue. ^Do you really 
remember, my dear Lucien, my first efforts ? ' 
^I well remember them,' was the reply. 
' Your story of our Cure de Gualdo charmed 
the whole family ; so, too, the wits in all the 
country round, as our uncle Archdeacon 
Lucien told us. How many times have I 
read it myself with delight and pride, for I 
was younger than all of them ! ' 

" Then we talked a little about Corsica, 
for which I noticed my brother cared less 
than I, France having absorbed him. He 
83 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

spoke slightingly of the patriot Paoli, to my 
displeasure, which I expressed. ' Then why/ 
said the First Consul, *have you abandoned 
him?' ^Because, brother, like you and Jo- 
seph, I preferred France to England. The 
constitution — ' ^ The constitution!' broke 
in the First Consul contemptuously. ' Have 
you ever seen an authentic copy of the plan 
which Jean Jacques Rousseau gave Paoli for 
Corsica V '1 never heard it mentioned even.' 
^ It is a positive fact. Abbe Eaynal told me 
that this document, as he knew, was a hotch- 
potch where most principles called free were 
sacrificed.' Napoleon now referred to Lu- 
cien's Jacobin sympathies, to which Lucien 
replied very seriously : ' Let me tell you, I 
have never deviated in the least from the 
opinions you have held. We have been good 
and sincere Republicans together — ^you glori- 
ously at the head of our armies, I in our 
popular assemblies or at the parliamentary 
tribune. If you call me a Jacobin in the only 
sense appropriate to me, all right. I don't 
object. But I beg you not to class me with 
some kinds of modern Jacobins, w^hom I like 
no more than you do, as they know well.' 

84 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

If I had not been taken up with the Louisi- 
ana matter, which I had been expecting he 
would start in upon, I should have refuted 
his accusation of Jacobinism with less moder- 
ation. 

"Eecurring to Paoli, I recalled to him 
what was true, that I had often heard him 
say Paoli was a great man on a small stage ; 
and that it was unfortunate, since he was one 
of those rare geniuses fitted to regenerate 
nations debased. ^Yes, I still have those 
thoughts sometimes,' said Napoleon, M^ut I 
smother them ; for the farther I get from 
good Paoli, the better I understand that men 
are not born to be free.' ' Have you come 
to believe, then, that men are better oif if lib- 
erty belongs to one single man alone, to use 
in behalf of all, with good intentions ? In a 
word, would you have one single, absolute 
king, like a single, absolute God ? ' ' Ah ! 
there you go into metaphysics !' said the First 
Consul. ^ I have no taste for them. Mathe- 
matics has driven me more and more from 
that science, if there is one.' " 

[The dialogue went on, Lucien continually 
anxious to get upon Louisiana, yet dreading 
85 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

to make the approach. In the desultory, in- 
timate talk, Napoleon all the time immersed 
in the bath, which contained a large infusion 
of cologne, there were, as reported by Lucien, 
now touches of conceit, now of good-nature, 
now of cynicism.] 

" ^ Machiavelli is right,' burst out the First 
Consul. * You must always live with your 
friends with the idea that they may some day 
be your enemies. He ought to have said, 
" you must live so with everybody." ' 

" It was almost time to come out of the 
bath, continues Lucien [one would indeed 
think so], and as yet there had been no men- 
tion of Louisiana. As the opportunity for 
saying something drew toward an end my 
hesitation increased. The valet had already 
prepared the cloth in which to wrap his mas- 
ter. I was about to leave the room, when 
Rustan [the famous Mameluke attendant] 
scratched like a cat at the door — a practise 
introduced a few weeks before at the Tuileries 
instead of knocking. The visitor for whom 
Eustan had put his nails to use at the door 
of the consular bath-room was no other than 
our brother Joseph. ' Let him come in,' 

86 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

said tlie First Consul ; ^ I shall stay in the 
bath a quarter of an hour longer.' He was 
accustomed to indulge inordinately in the 
bath when business did not press. I had 
time to make known to the newcomer that 
as yet I had not spoken of Louisiana, and I 
saw he was in doubt how to begin if our 
brother did not lead up to it." 

[In order to comprehend the scene which 
now took place, it must be remembered that 
the three brothers, though playing parts on a 
laro^e stas^e, were nev^ertheless in their charac- 
ters thorough Corsicans. The family tie was 
intensely strong ; if one had been assailed, 
the others would have entered upon a fierce 
vendetta, no doubt, with all the exaggerated 
clannishness of the barbarous islanders. The 
attachment to the old mother, Letitia Kamo- 
lino, was noteworthy and interesting : brothers 
and sisters held together remarkably. The 
tradition nevertheless is that Pauline, Caro- 
line, and Eliza scolded together like fishwives 
on slight occasion ; and the brothers, as we 
are about to see, sometimes all but laid hands 
upon each other in their wrath.] 

" The First Consul having settled back 
87 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

into the perfumed water, we brothers mean- 
time standing near, and the valet holding the 
sheet extended, Napoleon said to Joseph, 
' Well, brother, have you spoken to Lucien ? ' 
* What about ? ' said Joseph. ' Of our plan 
as to Louisiana, don't you know V ^ Of 
your plan, you mean, my dear brother. You 
can not have forgotten that far from being 
mine — ' ^ Well, well, preacher,' broke in 
Napoleon, ^ I don't need to discuss that with 
you, you are so obstinate. I like better to 
talk about serious things with Lucien; for^ 
although he sometimes takes it into his head 
to go against me, he knows how to give up 
to my idea when I think fit to change his.' 
^You are unjust enough,' said Joseph, *to 
attribute to obstinacy what is the effect of 
wise reflection.' 'Then,' said I to Joseph, 
laughingly, ' that means that I hold my ideas 
so lightly I can easily be I'easoned out of 
them.' 'Ah, my dear boy,' said Napoleon, 
' don't fear that any one will accuse you of 
lightness. You are more likely to be nick- 
named Ironhead (tete de fer^y 

[Some persiflage about the nickname Iron- 
head followed back and forth between Napo- 

88 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

leon and Lucien, during wHcli Josepli ap- 
peared bored.] 

"At last lie broke in quite brusquely, 
^Well, you say nothing more about your 
famous plan.' ^ Yes/ said the First Consul, 
' but it's late, and if Lucien is willing to wait 
with you in my cabinet, Mr. Faultfinder, I 
will join you soon. Please call back the va- 
let ; I must get out of the bath at once. Only 
take note, Lucien, I have made up my mind 
to sell Louisiana to the Americans.' I thought 
it my cue to show only moderate surprise at 
this announcement, which I pretended was 
news, feeling sure that I should have reason 
to show more, as his determination appeared 
to sell it of his own accord, without any 
consultation of the Chambers. I simply ex- 
claimed, ^ Indeed ! ' in a tone of curiosity, 
indicating a wish to know more, expressing 
neither approval nor the contrary. This ap- 
parent indifference caused Napoleon to say : 
* Well, Joseph, you see Lucien does not utter 
loud cries about this thing. Yet he almost 
has a right to, seeing that Louisiana is, so to 
speak, his own conquest.' * I assure you,' said 
Joseph, 4f Lucien says nothing, he thinks 
89 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

none the less.' ' Indeed ! and why should he 
be diplomatic with me ? ' Brought forward 
thus unexpectedly, and, as it ^vere, thrust 
against the wall, I had to explain myself; 
and really I was not sorry. But as Napoleon 
did not ask my opinion about the sale, I 
contented myself with declaring that I really 
thought on this matter as Joseph did. ^I 
undertake to say,' said I, in a tone which I 
tried to make as little offensive as possible, 
Hhat the Chambers will not assent.' ^You 
undertake to say ! '. Napoleon said this with 
an air and tone of contemptuous surprise. 
^ A pretty piece of business ! ' ^ And I un- 
dertake to say,' said Joseph in a tone of tri- 
umph, Hhat it will be so. And that is what 
I told the First Consul before.' ' And what 
did I say ? ' said our brother, his wrath rising, 
looking at us by turns, as if not to lose any 
change in our countenances. ^ You declared,' 
said Joseph, ^you would get along without 
the assent of the Chambers, did you not ? ' 
^Exactly. That is what I took the liberty 
to say to Monsieur Joseph, and what I repeat 
here to Citizen Lucien, begging him to give 
me his opinion about it, derived from his 

90 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

paternal tenderness for that mighty diplo- 
matic conquest of his.' " * 

[Let the reader dwell for a moment on 
the scene. The front of Napoleon with its 
black locks emerging from the water, his eyes 
afire with the battle- gleam as he turns them 
now this way, now that, his impetuous words 
rolling like a volley. He was now, at the age 
of thirty-four, in the height of his intellectual 
and physical vigor. His body, no longer 
marked by the emaciation of his earlier years, 
had not yet taken on the waxy corj^ulence 
of his later time ; his mind was never more 
alert ; his will never more imperious. Lu- 
cien's comment upon the moment is to this 
effect — that only those who have themselves 
undergone the blasting discharge of scorn 
and irony which alone of men this son of 
our father could deliver, can have any idea 
of its force. He remarks that he managed 
to stand up under it in the consciousness 
that his treaty was really a good and use- 
ful piece of diplomatic work, and so re- 
garded.] 

" The matter seemed about to be dropped, 

* Referring, of course, to Liicien's work at San Ildefonso. 

91 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

and Josepli and I were turning toward the 
door, while the valet was spreading open the 
sheet to wrap up his master, when the latter, 
returning to the charge, suddenly cried out 
in a tone that made us all start : ^ Well, sirs, 
think what you please about the sale of 
Louisiana ; but you may both of you put on 
mourning over this thing — you, Lucien, over 
the sale of your province ; you, JosejDh, be- 
cause I ]3urpose to dispense with the consent 
of all persons whatsoever. Do you hear ? ' 
I confess that I fairly shivered at such an 
outbreak, on a topic so delicate in the pres- 
ence of a servant. I kept still, however, but 
Joseph made a remark which caused a tre- 
mendous tempest, not in a teapot, as the say- 
ing is, but in the bath-tub of the man who 
was beginning to make all the sovereigns of 
Europe tremble. Stung by the scornful 
words and manner, especially by the con- 
temptuous ^ Do you hear ? ' which had been 
the cutting snapper to our brother's lashing 
wrath, Joseph rushed back, exclaiming : ^ You 
will do well, my dear brother, not to lay your 
plan before the Chambers, for I swear to you 
I will myself, the first, put myself, if neces- 

92 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

sary, at tlie head of the opposition which will 
certainly be made.' " 

Continuing, Lucien says: "I was prepar- 
ing to support Joseph, but in a somewhat 
less vehement tone, when I was stopped by 
an outburst from Napoleon of loud and sar- 
castic laughter, at the end of which Joseph, 
flushed and almost beside himself, stooping 
over the figure that lay immersed, screamed 
out : ^ Laugh, laugh, laugh, then ! All the 
same I shall do what I say ; and though I do 
not like to mount the tribune, this time you'll 
see me there.' At these words Napoleon, 
rising so as to show half his body out of the 
water opaque and frothy with cologne, cried 
sternly : ^ You will not need to play the ora- 
tor, for I repeat to you that this debate will 
not take place; because the plan so unlucky 
as to be disapproved by you, conceived by 
me, negotiated by me, will be ratified and ex- 
ecuted by me — by me alone, do you under- 
stand ? — by me, who scorn your opposition.' " 
The speaker then immersed himself once 
more to the neck ; but Joseph, whose self- 
control was quite gone, his face all aflame, 
roared : ^ Well, General, on my side I tell you 
93 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

that you, I, and all of the family, if you do 
what you say you will, may get ready to 
join shortly those poor innocent devils whom 
you so legally, so humanely— ^above all, with 
so much justice — have had transported to 
Cayenne.' " 

[The reference was to certain alleged con- 
spirators whom many thought harshly pun- 
ished. Lucien says it was a home- thrust, and 
he longed to get away. But now came an 
aquatic explosion the consequences of which 
he escaped by being in the background, but 
which Joseph received the full force of — an 
explosion caused by the quick rising and 
plunging back of Napoleon so that the water 
dashed out in a flood on the floor. He thun- 
dered at the same time, ^^You insolent fel- 
low, I ought — " Lucien says he did not hear 
the rest of the sentence, if there was any 
more.] 

Excited though he was himself, he could 
not help remarking the contrast in his two 
exasperated brothers. While Joseph red- 
dened with his fury, the pallor of Napoleon's 
face and breast only grew more marked. 
Feeling that he ought to play the part of 

94 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

conciliator in tlie wordy battle that had now 
become so violent, he hit out felicitously in 
discharging his part. Recalling the passage 
from the first book of the ^neid, in which 
Neptune chides the winds which, without 
his authority, have raised a great storm at 
sea, throwing himself into an appropriate at- 
titude, he broke in with the sonorous lines : 

" Tantane vos generis tenuit fiducia vestri, 
Jam coelum terramque meo sine numine, Venti, 
Miscere et tantas andetis tollere moles ? 
Quos ego sed motos prsestat componere fluctus." * 

Probably Lucien possessed in good meas- 
ure the dramatic faculty belonging to his race 
and family, and gave an effective burlesque, 
set off with all proper gesture and facial 
play. His expedient, at any rate, drew the 
electricity from the cloud and discharged it 
harmlessly. The angry combatants sobered 
down. Joseph had received full in the face 
the splash from the tub, which had also 
drenched his clothes. While the valet was 
sponging him off he muttered with cooling 

* Are you so possessed of confidence in yourselves that you 
now dare without my sanction, Winds, to confound heaven 
and earth and to pile up such masses I Whom I — but first I 
must quiet the disturbed waves. 
95 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

passion, '^Anyliow, your god is a big fool 
{l)ienfou)V 

"But tlie god," says Lucien, "disarmed, 
or wishing to appear so, remarked to me in a 
way pleasantly responsive, ^ You always have 
something that hits the occasion.' " 

The scene in the relating is absurdly gro- 
tesque, but no doubt was really terrifying. 
The valet had been not long before in the 
service of Joseph, and had hurried to the 
help of his old master when the drenching 
occurred. But now he gave all the brothers 
a shock by falling to the floor in a fainting 
fit, for which probably the quarrel of the 
magnates which he had just witnessed, gave 
good excuse. The Bonapartes good-heartedly 
rushed to the rescue. Joseph hurried to 
pick him up from the floor ; Lucien rang the 
bell so hard that Rustan came in frightened, 
to find out what was the matter ; while the 
lips of Napoleon, just visible over the bath- 
tub's edge, ejaculated sympathetically, " Car- 
ry oif the poor fellow, and take good care of 
him." Joseph and Lucien, helped by Rus- 
tan and a new servant, got the man to his 
feet, as he slowly recovered. Lucien now 

96 



Napoleon and Joseph Quarrel 

offered to help the First Consul, but the 
help was declined. Joseph stood soaked 
and grumbling {hougonnant) in a corner, 
causing Napoleon to offer him, in a tone more 
cool than obliging, his own dressing-room to 
change his clothes ; to which Joseph replied 
still more coolly, that he should change at 
home. " Are you coming, Lucien ? " he 
asked me. " Did he get a splashing too ? " 
said the First Consul. "No," said I. "Do 
me the favor, then," said Napoleon, " of wait- 
ing for me with Bourrienne. I want to talk 
with you. I'll be with you in a few mo- 
ments." 



97 



CHAPTER VI 

THE QUAEEEL WITH LUCIEN 

The first part of the battle over the sale 
of Louisiana was finished. Joseph had been 
routed. Lucien, though present, had not 
been active, contenting himself, while his 
brothers fired the serious volleys with " mark- 
ing time," so to speak."^ He was not to es- 
cape, however ; his turn had now come. 

" I went," he says, ^' to Bourrienne's cabi- 
net at once, and found th'at insupportable tee- 
totum (totillori) of a private secretary much 
stirred up at the First Consul's delay. See- 
ing that he expected to get the reason from 
me, to avoid the erimii of his talk I plunged 
into a newspaper while waiting to be called. 
It was half an hour before Rustan appeared 
with a summons from his master. 

* Lucien's word is peloter, to play ball, or, idiomatically, to 
fill up time with something unimportant while one is waiting. 

98 



The Quarrel with Lucien 

" As soon as I appeared the First Consul 
said, employing the affectionate thee and 
thou {tutoyant) : ' I wanted to speak to thee 
without Joseph. I should be very soriy that 
thou hadst witnessed his manner toward me 
if we did not all know how irascible he is. 
Before the world he has so pleasant a way 
that the rest of us pass for tigers in compari- 
son.' I replied that we all had indulgence 
for Joseph at such times, knowing his real 
gentleness, or rather good intentions. The 
usual quiet of his handsome face, I said, was 
the shinino; throuo-h of his beautiful soul. 
* That's fine, very fine,' said the First Consul, 
quoting a line from Ariosto." 

[Lucien says his brother's affectionate 
manner almost made him hope for success in 
his cause as the advocate of the retention 
of Louisiana; but he was soon undeceived. 
Napoleon proceeded to give his reasons at 
some length for wishing to sell Louisiana, 
which Lucien unfortunately abridges. What 
he does give, however, well deserves reading.] 

"It was certainly worth while, urges Na- 
poleon, first, to sell when you could what you 
were certain to lose, ^for the English, who 
99 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

have seen the colony given back to us with 
great displeasure, are aching for a chance to 
capture it, and it will be their first coup de 
main in case of war.' To this I replied that 
as regards selling what one fears to lose some 
day, it might do sometimes in private affairs, 
but not in public. As I looked at the honor 
of France, it was more disgraceful to sell 
Louisiana for $18,000,000 than to let it be 
taken in war. Frankly, I did not believe 
England then desired it. If the First Consul 
were not of my opinion, I did not see why, 
instead of giving up on such base conditions a 
colony of such importance, he did not profit 
by the peace and send troops there, as he 
had sent them to San Domingo. Napoleon 
replied, somewhat touched, and dropping the 
* thee ' and ' thou ' : ' But you did not believe 
in my San Domingo expedition.' I replied 
that I had not been satisfied with the treat- 
ment given to Toussaint. ' Well, let me tell 
you,' said Napoleon, ^ I am more ready than I 
like to be to confess to-day my regret at the 
San Domingo expedition. Our navy, so in- 
ferior to that of our neighbors across the 
Channel, will always cause our colonies to be 
100 



The Quarrel with Lucien 

exposed to great risks.' ^ Yes,' said I, ' espe- 
cially if we force those neighbors to make 
war on us before we liave increased our own 
navy. All who think as I do rejoice to see 
that you are giving some thought to that.' 
^ Yes, of course,' said the First Consul. ^ I'm 
doing what I can. But trust me, our national 
glory will never come from our navy.' ' But 
formerly, not long ago,' said I. Here Napo- 
leon broke in impatiently. ^ Bah — bah ! for- 
merly — but I am speaking of now.' He con- 
tinued in a tone less sharp: ^You see our 
land forces have fought, and will fight victo- 
riously against all Europe. But as to the sea, 
my dear fellow, you must know that there we 
have to lower the flag — we and all the powers 
of the continent. America perhaps some day 
—but I'll not talk of that. The English 
navy is and long will be too dominant ; we 
shall not equal it.' ^ But Colbert proved,' I 
said ; here Napoleon broke in with the rudest 
abruptness : ' Silence ! ' {taisez-vous), ^ Col- 
bert—Colbert ! You talk like the Third Con- 
sul, Lebrun, who always has Colbert on his 
tongue, or Sully, or George d'Amboise, all 
statesmen of the past, who, I assure you, would 
101 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

tave had a harder time in my place. Know 
well that the desire to fight England on the 
sea by no means enters into my thoughts — 
in the first place, because I am in no condi- 
tion to command myself. If I have great 
faith in French valor, I have none the less in 
my own happy star. I count positively on 
victory only when I command myself. See 
the blunders {sottises) that have been made 
when I have been out of the way.' " [This 
outbreak, so characteristically Napoleonic — 
his self-confidence escaping conceit only by 
being so sublimely colossal — greatly scandal- 
ized Lucien, who says his brother too often 
fell into this tone ; and cites the names of 
Hoche, Marceau, Kellermann, Moreau, Brune, 
Championnet, Bernadotte, Massena, and the 
rest, commanders of the fourteen armies of 
the Eepublic, as not deserving to be thus 
depreciated. The First Consul, discussing 
still further what he called his Louisianicide, 
in a mocking way, gave a reason for selling 
which Lucien believes to have been the chief 
one — the pretended necessity of getting funds 
ready for the war which he foresaw. This 
was very repulsive to Lucien, who declares a 
102 



The Quarrel with Lucien 

war of conquest was meditated, " for I wisli to 
have it well understood that I do not believe 
my brother ever made war in spite of himself 
at any time whatever. I know too well his 
secret thoughts, particularly at the time I am 
considering."] 

" ' So then,' said Napoleon, dropping again 
into an affectionate manner, 4f I am to be- 
lieve Joseph, and also what thou sayest, thou 
wilt range thyself with him against me in 
case I should submit my plan for selling the 
much-loved Louisiana.' Lucien was softened 
by the affectionate ^ thou,' but did not recede, 
whereupon the First Consul bristled again. 
*As you please. Cease the miserable candl- 
ing which you and Joseph are at work on 
night and day, ridiculous for him, and still 
less appropriate for you. It is not from you 
that I expect lessons in government. Enough ! 
Forget all you have said about it. I shall 
contrive to dispense with you. A precious, 
well-disposed pair of brothers you are ! ' I 
remained silent, says Lucien. His taunting 
tone of contemptuous superiority was harder 
to bear than if he had actually assaulted me. 
I began to think he would give me no further 
103 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

chance to return to the matter I had so much 
at heart. He seemed to wish me to go, turn- 
ing oyer papers on his desk, and looking at 
me askance from under his eyebrows {en des- 
sous) now and then. Forming a plan w^hich 
was destined to turn out badly, I thought I 
might bring him back to Louisiana by a little 
brotherly soothing, w^hich might come in nat- 
urally enough after what he had just said 
about Joseph and me. Kesponding rather 
languidly to my affectionate advance, he threw 
himself into an armchair with a tired air, 
telling me also to sit down, which I did in a 
chair close at hand, with a sincere desire not 
to trouble him though returning a mes mou- 
tons. Taking his hand, which he abandoned 
to me listlessly, not answering to the friendly 
pressure which I gave, ^Believe me well, 
dear brother,' said I, ^ fraternal devotion can 
not go farther than that which I feel for you.' 
^ H'm ! ' he replied. ' Devotion proves itself 
by deeds when the opportunity comes. I 
don't at all say that you have always failed 
me here ; but you fail me now on this point 
to which I attach great importance. But we 
only waste time. Dispense with your fine prot- 
104 



The Quarrel with Luclen 

estations.' ^But let me assure you again,' 
replied Lucien, ^ my devotion is deep enough 
to sacrifice everything for you, except my 
duty.' ^ Except, you mean, all you please to 
except,' said the First Consul, scorn once 
more gathering. ^ No, brother,' said Lucien. 
^ If I believed, for example, this sale of Louisi- 
ana would be fatal to me alone, I would con- 
sent to it to prove to you the devotion which 
you doubt. But it is too unconstitutional.' 

"Napoleon broke here into a fit of the 
rasping, sarcastic, almost convulsive laughter 
to which he sometimes gave way in moments 
of excitement. It did not come from the 
open throat (deployee)^ says Lucien, but as if 
forced from the depths of his chest, cutting 
off his utterances as he had cut me off. ' Ha- 
ha-ha! You are drawing it fine. For ex- 
ample ! ' Lucien began to fear the roughest 
possible explosion as his brother's words 
struggled out in the intervals of his cachin- 
natory spasm. ' Ha-ha-ha ! For example ! ' 
repeated he, catching his breath. ' Unconsti- 
tutional ! That's droll from you — a good 
joke — ha-ha!' And the outbursts went on 
less forced, but not more natural. I sat mute, 
105 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

says Lucien, quite stupefied at the irritation 
wliicli I bad unwittingly produced. An ex- 
pression of ironical and contemptuous rage 
passed over Napoleon's face following this 
nervous and uncanny gaiety. Conscious, says 
Lucien, that I deserved his esteem more than 
his contempt, I was determined not to be 
driven from my word ^unconstitutional,' by 
which I had only meant to justify myself, or 
at least to soften my resistance to his will. I 
coolly said, therefore, I was astonished that 
he could treat so mockingly so great a sub- 
ject. ' Do let that rest,' he cried, shrugging 
his shoulders. 'How have I touched your 
constitution ? Answer.' * I know well,' said 
Lucien, 'you have not done so; but you 
know well that to alienate any possession 
of the Republic without the consent of the 
Chambers is unconstitutional. The expres- 
sion of such a thought by the august repre- 
sentative of the national sovereignty, who 
until now has been its most glorious defender, 
is a subject for astonishment. In a word, the 

constitution ' " 

The last phrase brought upon Lucien a 
most emphatic " Clear out ! " (allez-vous prom^ 
106 



The Quarrel with Lucien 

ener), the wrathful Napoleon just stopping 
short of a bodily attack. The brothers, we 
may be sure, had by this time sprung to their 
feet. 

" These precise words," says Lucien, " were 
then thundered forth : ' Constitution ! Un- 
constitutional ! Republic ! National sover- 
eignty ! Great words — fine phrases ! Do 
you think you are still at the club of St 
Maximin? We are past that, you had bet- 
ter believe. Parhleu ! You phrase it nobly. 
Unconstitutional ! It becomes you ^vell, Sir 
Knight of the Constitution, to talk that way 
to me. You hadn't the same respect for the 
Chambers on the eighteenth Brumaire!'^ 
Here Lucien broke in in a tone as high 
as Napoleon's : ' You well know, my dear 
brother, that your entry into the Five Hun- 
dred had no warmer opponent than I. No, 
I was not your accomplice, but the repairer 
of the evil which you had done to yourself ; 
and that at my own peril, and with some 
generosity on my part because we did not 

* Lucien, who at the little village of St. Maximin, in south- 
ern France, had been a Jacobin leader, had helped bring the 
Directory to an end November 9, 1799. 

107 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

then agree. Not to boast, I may add that no 
one more than I in Europe has disapproved 
the sacrilege against the national representa- 
tion.' Lucien says he read the effect of his 
words in his brother's eyes, which flamed like 
great diamonds brilliant in themselves. He 
declares he was not angry himself ; and his 
blood being np, he did not fear to expose him- 
self to the First Consul's wrath. " He repeated 
firmly : ' Yes, unconstitutional attempt uj)on 
the national sovereignty.' * Go on — go on,' 
cried Napoleon, ' that's quite too fine a thing 
to be cut short. Sir Orator of the clubs ! But 
at the same time take note of this, you and 
Monsieur Joseph, that I shall do just as I 
please ; that I detest without fearing them 
your friends the Jacobins, not one of whom 
shall remain in France if, as I hope, things con- 
tinue to rest in my hands — and that, in fine, 
I snap my fingers at you and your national 
representation ! ' 

"Greatly scandalized," says Lucien, "as 
may well be believed, at this outburst, for I 
was still in all the naivete of my republican- 
ism, I replied as coolly as I could : ' On my 
side, Citizen Consul, I do not snap my fingers 
108 



The Quarrel with Lucien 

at you, but I well know what I think about 
you.' ^What you think about me, Citizen 
Lucien? Parhleu! I am curious to know. 
Out with it.' ^ I think, Citizen Consul, that 
having sworn to the Constitution of the 
eighteenth Brumaire, as president of the 
Council of Five Hundred, and seeing you 
despise it thus, if I were not your brother I 
would be your enemy.' ^ My enemy ! ' thun- 
dered Napoleon. ' Try it once. That's rather 
strong,' and he made a movement toward me 
as if to strike me a blow. To this day I 
thank God that he did not strike me, for I 
would not have endured it. He paused, how- 
ever, before the coolness with which I faced 
him. ' Thou my enemy ! ' he screamed. ' Look, 
I would dash you to the earth as I do this 
box.' He had in his hand his snuif-box, in 
the lid of which was Isabey's miniature of 
Josephine. This he flung violently to the 
floor. It did not break, being received on 
the carpet; but the portrait fell out of the 
cover. I hastened to pick it up, and present- 
ing it to Na]Doleon in a manner which I forced 
myself to make respectful, said : ^ It's too bad. 
It's your wife's picture, not your brother, that 
109 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

you have broken.' " Lucien says he now re- 
tired backward toward the door, not to con- 
form to an etiquette as yet not established at 
the Tuileries, but to keep in his eye this friend 
or enemy, as the case might be. The First 
Consul, however, did not follow up his begin- 
ning. Instead, he carefully picked up the 
box, and Lucien saw through the door, which 
he left open as he went away, that Napoleon 
was trying to put the picture back into the 
lid. This made him think his brother was 
not so angry as he wished to ajipear.^* 

" Turning it over, I made up my mind that 
Napoleon was trying to terrify me by this 
spectacle of extreme wrath, hoj^jing to over- 
come my opposition. To this view I am all 
the more inclined, because my brother often, 
especially in scenes where he figured with 
splendor, posed as a great actor. Not at all 
that I believe, as some have alleged, that he 

* Josephine, West Indian Creole and very superstitious as 
she was, was much disturbed by this incident. The impending 
divorce was already casting its shadow before. She consulted 
a famous fortune-teller. Mile. Le Norm ant, as to what it was 
best to do, who suggested covering the miniature which had 
run such risk with a duplicate by the same artist. This was 
done ; the box with the double portrait is said to be still ex- 
tant. 

110 



The Quarrel with Lucien 

shut himself up with our common friend, the 
great actor Talma, to prearrange the effect of 
such and such oratorical gestures, or, indeed, 
of the folds and carriage of the imperial 
mantle. No ; in my view, he was charged 
with the dramatic instinct, but his acting was 
always offhand {improvise)^ based on the cir- 
cumstances in which he found himself. I 
ought, however, to confess that this scene of 
the broken snuff-box was so well played in 
its fury as to puzzle me about his real feel- 
ing. I am sure that what I said displeased 
him deeply." 

" What else took place," says Lucien, " as 
regards the sale of Louisiana has no more 
personal relation to me." He makes a brief 
reference to another scene between the First 
Consul and Joseph, which indicates that the 
latter did not at all regard himself as routed 
at the engagement of the bath-tub. At the 
end of an argument the First Consul had be- 
come angry, and enlarged on his grievances, 
before which Josejoh showed himself un- 
abashed. He drove at his brother, on the 
contrary, with such vehemence that Napoleon 
was forced to leave the field, seeking refuge 
111 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

in the apartments of Josephine. But out of 
all this hot discussion, in which the fate of a 
colony was concerned, nothing came, says Lu- 
cien, except a little greater haste in the exe- 
cution of his calamitous plan — the sale of 
Louisiana for a few millions, destined to be 
applied to an insensate strife against Europe. 
Lucien concludes, writing at a time long 
after, in a tone which will seem to all frater- 
nal in spirit, and just and moderate in its 
judgment : ^' In spite of all the harm done me 
by this brother of mine, who became all-pow- 
erful, and in spite of the tyrannical acts with 
which his glorious memory has too justly 
been reproached, I believe that far from hav- 
ing a tyrant's heart his nature was funda- 
mentally good. Pushed to an extreme of 
power which he did not desire himself, he 
might with impunity have done much more 
than he did, encouraged and approved by 
flatterers. I firmly believe he deserves thanks 
as much, and more even, for the evil which 
he did not do, having all power to do it, as 
for the good which can really be ascribed to 
him in many of the startling crises of his 



career.'' 



112 



CHAPTER VII 

LIVmeSTO]^ AT PAEIS 

The great event was at haud ; but before 
describing the critical moment of the trans- 
fer, it will be interesting to take a look at 
the envoy of America, as he waits in that 
troubled and excited world of Paris, watching 
and laboring for an issue to the affair which 
may be of benefit to his country. Jefferson 
never did better than in the selection of 
Robert R. Livingston to represent America 
in this crisis. Of a distinguished line in 
which Scotch and Dutch were blended, he 
himself from an early age had shown remark- 
able powers and rendered extraordinary pub- 
lic services. He had been on the Committee 
of Five for drafting the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence ; he had presided at the convention 
at which New York adopted the Federal 
Constitution, bringing about the favorable 
8 113 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

result by his influence. As Chancellor of 
New York he had administered the oath to 
Washington at his inauguration ; and first of 
men had hailed him as he stood in the su- 
preme place, ^^ Long live George Washington, 
President of the United States ! " In the 
full strength of his powers he was now set 
to conduct a most arduous and embarrassing 
negotiation, which he carried through in a 
manner to confirm his title to high fame. 
When he finally left Eu- 
rope, in 1805, Napoleon 
assured him of his re- 
gard, bestowing upon 
him one of those taba- 
tieres (snuff-boxes) which 
in that day appeared 
now and then in con- 
nection with interesting 
events. This snuff-box, 
too, like the one de- 
scribed by Lucien, was 
set magnificently with diamonds, and had in 
its lid a miniature by Isabey — this time a 
picture of Napoleon himself. American dis- 
tinctions, too, were not wanting, and the 
114 




Livingston at Paris 

Commonwealtli of New York could not liave 
chosen better then to set a statue of him — 
as she did at a later time — in the hall at 
Washington, as one of her two typical great 
men. 

But when Livingston began, in the fall of 
1801, his work as envoy in Paris, the path 
before him was beset indeed by thorns. Of 
his course, his letters to the administration, 
contained in the Annals of Congress,* give 
a full account, and are often interesting 
reading. 

As has been mentioned, an important part 
of the work expected from Livingston was 
to obtain payment of the spoliation claims — 
the reimbursement of American merchants 
for property taken from them by the French 
when the two nations had been at peace. 
France had admitted the justice of the claims, 
but payment was withheld. In addition to 
this business, the envoy was charged with the 
negotiation for the mouths of the Mississippi, 
New Orleans, and the Floridas — a matter 
which almost at once, when in November the 
news was spread that France was treating 

* Seventh Congress, second session, Appendix. 
115 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

witli Spain for the cession of Louisiana, be- 
came of the utmost importance. 

December 10th, Livingston writes Madi- 
son, he has heard the story, but that Talley- 
rand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, has denied 
it. "He seemed at first inclined to waive 
the subject ; but when he found I pressed 
more closely, he admitted that it had been a 
subject of conversation, but nothing had been 
concluded or even resolved on in that affair. 
I left him with a hint that perhaps both 
France and Spain might find a mutual inter- 
est in ceding the Floridas to the United 
States." Lucien Bonaparte's treaty for the 
cession had been arranged at San Ildefonso 
March 21st preceding ; but it may palliate the 
prevarication of Talleyrand, that the treaty 
when he spoke, and long after, lacked the 
sio:nature of the kins:, and therefore was un- 
ratified. Livingston finds abundant reasons 
for believing the cession has been made, and 
that an armament is preparing to occupy 
Louisiana. "By the secrecy and duplicity 
practised relative to this object, it is clear to 
me that they apprehend some opposition on 
the part of America to their plans. But I 
116 



Livingston at Paris 

have declared that as long as France con- 
forms to the existing treaty between us and 
Spain (Godoy's treaty of 1795), we do not 
consider ourselves as having any interest 
in opposing the exchange."* Livingston's 
thought seems to be that France as a neigh- 
bor will be as little dangerous as Spain, but 
as time goes on the tone in his papers changes. 
The famous Bernadotte, it is reported, is to 
command the Louisiana expedition, and has 
asked for ten thousand men. " I have pressed 
an explanation on the subject, but have re- 
ceived no answer." f The exchange others 
think can not be looked upon as a matter of 
indifference. " Has it occurred to you," writes 
Eufus King, Minister to England, to Madi- 
son, ^'that the French Government will prob- 
ably send thither a large body of people from 
France, and that it may add to them all the 
refractory and discontented blacks and per- 
sons of color of their West Indian colonies ? "J 
Throughout the spring of 1802 Livingston is 
on the alert, though, as will presently be seen, 
he is less apprehensive as to a good result 
than others. He besets Talleyrand incessantly, 

* January 13, 1802. f February 26th. t February 27th. 

117 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

but is forever baffled by the minister's indi 
rection. From other sources he learns of the 
preparation of Bernadotte's expedition, and 
recommends the occupation of Natchez, to 
serve in case of need, as a substitute for New 
Orleans. " No time should be lost in throw- 
ing obstructions in the way." * 

During the summer Livingston began the 
writing of a series of papers elaborately set- 
ting forth the inexpediency for France of an 
effort to seize and colonize Louisiana; and 
insisting, if the cession from Spain were com- 
pleted, that the territory ought to be sold to 
the United States. These papers are well- 
reasoned and vigorously expressed documents, 
thoroughly worthy the attention of the stu- 
dent of this affair.f Livingston was assured 
by Joseph Bonaparte, wdth whom he became 
well acquainted, that they came under the 
eye of Napoleon. One thinks that the good 
opinion which Napoleon had of Livingston 
must have been largely based upon the im- 
pression made upon him by these able discus- 

* May 2«Lh. 

f See Appendix A for a specimen of Livingston's work in 
this kind. 

118 



Livingston at Paris 

sions. Thougli it was widely believed that 
the First Consul took counsel only of himself, 
it was not at all the case that he neglected 
in reaching his conclusions such lights as he 
might gain from the sensible and well-in- 
formed. Meantime the envoy had no reason 
to feel that any outcome favorable to his 
country was likely. It became known that 
Victor, a general still more vigorous, had re- 
placed Bernadotte at the head of the expedi- 
tion, and that preparations were nearly com- 
plete. Talleyrand gave assurance that no 
arrangement with the United States was pos- 
sible, and Livingston thus voiced his own con- 
victions to Madison at home : " There never 
was a Government where less could be done 
by negotiation than here. There is no peo- 
ple, no legislature, no counselors. One man 
is everything. He seldom asks advice and 
never hears it unasked. His ministers are 
mere clerks, and his legislature and counsel- 
ors parade officers. Though the sense of 
every reflecting man about him is against 
this wild expedition, no one dares to tell him 
so. Were it not for the uneasiness it excites 
at home it would give me none, for I am per- 
119 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

suaded tliat the whole will end in a relin- 
quishment of the country, and transfer of the 
capital to the United States. Their islands 
call for much more than France can ever fur- 
nish. The extreme Jiaiiteur of this Govern- 
ment to all around them will not suif er peace 
to be of long continuance." * 

Livingston's expressed conviction in this 
passage that the affair must end in a relin- 
quishment of the whole territoiy by France, 
and a transference of it to us, is an interest- 
ing flash of prophecy. He saw the approach 
of all-absorbing European war. Without 
his knowledge, too, while he wrote, those 
potent and direful agents, the blacks and the 
yellow fever, were at work in San Domingo. 
When he next wrote to his chief the outlook 
for America was clearing ; from the misfor- 
tunes of France great benefits were to accrue 
to us. " The Mississippi business, though all 
the officers are appointed, and the army under 
orders, has met with a check. The army 
under orders is obstructed for the moment. 
Events may possibly arise of which we may 
avail ourselves." f At the moment when he 

* September 1st. f October 28th. 

120 



I 



I 



Livingston at Paris 

wrote Le Clerc was at tlie point of death, and 
scarcely 1,200 of the host he had commanded 
still kept their feet. A passage follows con- 
cerning an interview with Joseph Bonaparte, 
who plainly, from what we know of his real 
views on the alienation of Louisiana, is 
guarded and politic in his talk with the 
American. 

" I had, two days ago, a very interesting 
conversation with Joseph Bonaparte, having 
put into his hands a copy of the Memoir on 
Louisiana which I sent the Secretary of State. 
I took occasion to tell him that the interest 
he had taken in settling the differences be- 
tween our respective countries had entitled 
him to our confidence, and that I should take 
the liberty to ask his advice in matters that 
were likely to disturb the harmony that sub- 
sisted between our respective republics. He 
seemed pleased at the compliment, and told 
me that he would receive with pleasure any 
communication I could make ; but as he 
would not wish to appear to interfere with 
the minister, he begged that my communica- 
tion might be informal and unsigned — exactly 
what I wished, because I should act with less 
121 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

danger of committing myself, and, of course, 
with more freedom. He added : ' You must 
not, however, suppose my power to serve you 
greater than it actually is ; my brother is his 
own counselor; but we are good brothers; 
he hears me with pleasure ; and as I have 
access to him at all times, I have an oppor- 
tunity of turning his attention to a particular 
subject that might otherwise be passed over.' 
I then asked him if he had read my notes on 
Louisiana. He told me that he had, and that 
he had conversed upon the subject with the 
First Consul, who, he found, had read them 
with attention ; that his brother had told him 
he had nothing more at heart than to be on 
the best of terms with the United States." 
Whether in this interview Joseph was quite 
frank may well be doubted ; but it is pretty 
good evidence that the First Consul and his 
entourage thought it worth while to weigh 
well Livingston's words. 

The sky still continued dark; the expe- 
dition was still threatened ; the best that 
Livingston could write at the end of the year 
was : " Do not absolutely despair." ^ The news 

* December 23d. 

122 



Livingston at Paris 

of the abrogation of tlie right of deposit en- 
joyed by Americans at New Orleans, the act 
of the intendant, Morales, which so aroused 
America toward the end of 1802, stirred 
Livingston to vigorous remonstrance. Re- 
garding the French occupancy as now in- 
evitable, seeking the best terms he could, he 
urged with all his might the conclusion of a 
treaty through which the United States might 
have what she desired, the Floridas and the 
mouths of the Mississippi, adding also this 
recommendation, which deserves particular 
notice : " Let France cede to the United 
States so much of Louisiana as lies above the 
mouth of the river Arkansas. By this a 
barrier will be placed between the colony of 
France and Canada, from which she may other- 
wise be attacked. . . . Let her retain the coun- 
try lying on the west of the Mississippi and 
below the Arkansas River — a country capable 
of supporting fifteen millions of inhabitants.'' * 
It is noteworthy, indeed, that only in this 
suggestion, repeated by him at other times, 
does Livingston manifest any thought for or 
interest in the great Northwest, the coming 

* January 10, 1803. 

123 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

of wliicli to us has proved in subsequent 
years so immeasurably the most important 
part of the bargain. It is also noteworthy 
that no other statesman than Livingston 
makes mention of it as a thing desirable ; and 
examining the matter more closely, it is inter, 
esting to see that even Livingston at first had 
no premonition of the greatness and wealth 
that was to come to pass in that unbroken 
wilderness. This is proved by a passage in 
a letter written soon after.* " M. Talleyrand 
asked me this day, when pressing the subject, 
whether we wished to have the whole of 
Louisiana. I told him no ; that our wishes ex- 
tended only to New Orleans and the Floridas ; 
that the policy of France should dictate (as I 
had shown in an official note) to give us the 
country above the river Arkansas, in order 
to place a barrier between them and Canada. 
He said that if they gave New Orleans the 
rest would be of little value." In this opinion 
of Talleyrand, Livingston at that moment 
seems to concur. If the United States 
should possess the vast Northwest it would 
be an advantage to France as a barrier against 

* April 11th. 

124 



Livingston at Paris 

the British, though scarcely an advantage to 
the United States. We shall see, however, 
that at a time close at hand the eyes of Liv- 
ingston were opened — that almost alone in 
his generation, with noble, prophetic inspira- 
tion, he foresaw and declared the develop- 
ment that was to come. 

Livingston's communications to Talley- 
rand in the early months of 1803 put the 
American view with great force and courage. 
We want the Floridas and New Orleans ; the 
unobstructed navigation of the Mississippi is 
indispensable. Let France beware, for her 
policy will certainly result in disaster ; in the 
draining of her population to people a waste, 
in the sacrifice of armies and resources, in the 
final surrender of Louisiana, in the loss to 
France of the friendship of the United States. 
Your present policy, Monsieur le Ministre des 
Affaires Etrangeres^ can result in no other 
way than, in Jefferson's phrase, " to marry us 
to the British fleet and nation." With such 
representations Livingston pressed Talley- 
rand ; he opened also other channels of com- 
munication with the First Consul — through 
Joseph Bonaparte, through Barbe-Marbois, 
125 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Minister of the Treasury (who had served in 
America, and who was an old friend), and 
through Bernadotte. The latter, having been 
replaced by Victor in command of the Louisi- 
ana expedition, was now expecting to sail at 
once to America as envoy to Washington. 
Spain, too, was not neglected ; through the 
Spanish ambassador at Paris pressure was 
brought to bear upon Madrid against the 
course which things were taking. 

The American representative had nothing 
to reproach himself with as regarded the dis- 
charge of his duty ; and it was natural that 
he should have felt, with anxiety and sorrow, 
that, after all his work and exasperation in 
struggling with the baffling duplicity of Tal- 
leyrand's diplomacy and the headstrong pur- 
pose of the First Consul, he found his consid- 
eration was sinking both in France and 
America, and that he was about to be super- 
seded. Bernadotte was to go as envoy 
to Washington to negotiate matters there, 
which he in Paris should have been em- 
powered to take care of. He complains of 
the indefiniteness of his instructions; and 
when at last news arrives of the appointment 
126 



Livingston at Paris 

of James Monroe as Minister Extraordinary, 
set directly over his head, no wonder that to 
a man of such spirit it became an occasion of 
wrath. As the reader knows, Jefferson, in 
appointing Monroe, had especially in view 
the quieting of excitement in the West and 
South over the closing of the Mississipj)i by 
Morales ; to name a popular man for a special 
mission, it was thought, would have a good 
effect, and, as we have seen, it proved to be 
an admirable stroke of policy. But Living- 
ston, three thousand miles distant, receiving 
news only after months of delay, could not 
know all this, and it is natural that in his 
correspondence at this time there should be 
touches of grief and temper. " I can not but 
wish, sir, that my fellow citizens should not 
be led to believe from Mr. Monroe's appoint- 
ment that I had been negligent of their inter- 
ests, or too delicate on any of the great points 
entrusted to my care. I trust that a com- 
munication of my notes to some of them would 
show that I had gone as far as possible for 
me to go, and perhaps further than my in- 
structions would justify." * 

* March 18th. 

127 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

But Livingston's long labor was about to 
end, the denouement being now at hand of 
the knot which had been so sorely perplex- 
ing. On the 11th of April Talleyrand start- 
led the envoy by the inquiry whether the 
United States would buy the whole of Louisi- 
ana, and what price it would be willing to 
pay. What lay back of the changed attitude 
of the minister the narrative of Lucien as to 
the determination which the First Consul 
had at this time reached, makes sufficiently 
plain. Livingston declares he assured Tal- 
leyrand " that we were not disposed to trifle ; 
that the times were critical, and though I 
did not know what instructions Mr. Monroe 
might bring, I was perfectly satisfied they 
would require a precise and prompt notice ; 
that I was very fearful, from the little prog- 
ress I had made, that my Government would 
consider me as a very indolent negotiator. 
He laughed, and told me that he would give 
me a certificate that I was the most importu- 
nate he had met with." 

With this little touch of good nature — 
rare enough, no doubt, in this arch schemer — 
Talleyrand steps off the scene, so far as our 
12a 



Livingston at Paris 

story is concerned. Now that a new policy- 
was to be followed, Napoleon had a helper 
at hand whom he thought more trustworthy. 
Livingston, too, retires from the first place, 
for Monroe had arrived charged with the 
latest purposes of the administration. Living- 
ston's work had been well and faithfully done, 
and no chapter of our diplomatic history is 
more memorable and interesting than the 
long struggle which preceded the Louisiana 
settlement. His work as a man of affairs 
was not less important than as a statesman. 
Returning to America, after an interval, he 
became the main support of Eobert Fulton 
in the application of steam to locomotion, one 
of the most momentous of human inventions. 
His life, full of illustrious service, ended in 
1813. 



129 



CHAPTER VIII 

LOUISIANA SOLD 

What may be called the secret history of 
Napoleon's determination to sell Louisiana 
has been sufficiently dwelt upon ; so, too, the 
battle of Livingston, so long hopeless, in the 
diplomatic closets at Paris. Returning to 
the public aspects, we have fortunately an 
authority to follow, of high character, whose 
opportunities for knowledge were of the best. 
Frangois, Marquis de Barbe-Marbois, had 
been before the Revolution Consul-General 
in the United States, marrying there an 
American wife and enjoying the friendship 
and respect of many prominent men. He 
became afterward civil administrator of San 
Domingo, whence returning to France he 
was made mayor of his native city, Metz, 
and during the Revolution a member of the 
Council of Ancients. As the storm grew 
130 



Louisiana Sold 

violent, his moderate opinions caused his 
exile to Cayenne. With tlie fall of the Di- 
rectory he was recalled, receiving at once a 
high position. He was made Minister of the 
Treasury through the influence of the Third 
Consul, Lebrun, and at once won the confi- 
dence of Napoleon, who now, as his Louisiana 
perplexities became embarrassing, took him 
into his counsels and entrusted him, rather 
than Talleyrand, with the management of the 
affair. Barbe-Marbois, though in official life, 
grew less friendly to Napoleon at a later 
time, and became Minister of Justice under 
the regime that succeeded him. In his after 
life, which lasted until 1837, he wrote a his- 
tory of Louisiana and its alienation from 
France, which is a book of marked ability. 

Following the account of Barbe-Marbois,* 
the declarations of Napoleon, who had, we 
know, just before fought the battle oat with 
Joseph and Lucien, are direct and confident. 
He consulted his ministers ; but before calling 
this conference he had denounced the claims 
of England to be " mistress of the seas," and 
had said "to free the world from the com- 

* History of Louisiana, translation, pp. 360, etc. 
131 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

mercial tyranny of England it is necessary to 
oppose to lier a maritime power whicli will 
one day become her rival. It must be the 
United States. The English aspire to dis- 
pose of all the riches of the world. I shall 
be useful to the entire universe if I can pre- 
vent them from dominating America as they 
dominate Asia." 

On Easter Sunday, April 10, 1803, Na- 
poleon, having attended service, summoned 
Barbe-Marbois and Decres, Minister of the 
Marine, who also had had an American ex- 
perience. He addressed to them his request 
for advice in what was really a demand for 
their assent to his plans, " made with vehe- 
mence and passion," which did not invite ar- 
gument. The first declaration of his purposes 
is thus given by Marbois : 

"I know the worth of Louisiana and I 
have wished to repair the error of the French 
negotiator who abandoned it in 1762. I 
have recovered it on paj^er through some 
lines in a treaty ; but I have hardly done so 
when I am about to lose it again. But if it 
escapes me, it shall one day be a dearer cost 
to those who force me to give it up than the 
132 



Louisiana Sold 

cost to those to whom I will surrender it. 
The English have successively taken from 
France, Canada, the Isle Royal, Newfound- 
land, Acadia, and the richest territories of 
Asia. They are intriguing and disturbing 
in San Domingo. They shall not have the 
Mississippi, which they covet. Louisiana is 
nothing in comparison with their aggrandize- 
ment in all parts of the globe ; but the jeal- 
ousy they feel because of its return under 
the dominion of France warns me that they 
intend to seize it, and it is thus they will be- 
gin the war. They have already twenty ves- 
sels in the Gulf of Mexico. They swagger 
over those seas as sovereigns : and in San 
Domingo, since the death of LeClerc, our af- 
fairs are going from bad to worse. The con- 
quest of Louisiana will be easy if they will 
only take the trouble to descend upon it. I 
have not a moment to lose in putting it out 
of their power. I do not know but what 
they are there already. That is their usual 
way of doing things : and as for me, if I were 
in their place, I certainly would not have 
waited. I wish to take away from them 
even the idea that they will ever be able to 
133 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

own this colony. I contemplate turning it 
over to the United States. I should hardly 
be able to say I had ceded it to them, for we 
are not yet in possession of it. But even a 
short delay may leave me nothing but a vain 
title to transmit to these Republicans, whose 
friendship I seek. They are asking me for 
but a single city of Louisiana, but I abeady 
regard the whole colony as lost, and it seems 
to me that in the hands of this rising power 
it will be more useful to the politics and 
even to the commerce of France than if I 
attempt to keep it." 

Decres opposed the sale, but Barbe-Mar- 
bois favored it, arguing the matter at length, 
ably and with full knowledge of the situa- 
tion. Napoleon broke off the conference for 
the time, but at daybreak of the 11th, Barbe- 
Marbois, being suddenly summoned, found 
Napoleon busy with despatches which had 
just arrived from England, giving news that 
both on land and sea warlike preparations 
were being pushed with extraordinary ra- 
pidity. 

"Irresolution and deliberation are no 
longer in season," he broke out. " It is not 
134 



Louisiana Sold 

only New Orleans I will cede ; it is tlie whole 
colony, without any reservation. I know the 
value of what I abandon, and I have suffi- 
ciently proved the importance I attach to this 
province, since my first diplomatic act with 
Spain had for its object the recovery of it. I 
renounce it with the greatest regret. To at- 
tempt obstinately to retain it would be folly. 
I direct you to negotiate this affair with the 
envoys of the United States. Do not even 
await the arrival of Mr. Monroe ; have an 
interview this very day with Mr. Livingston ; 
but I require a great deal of money for this 
war, and I would not like to commence it 
with new taxes. For a hundred years France 
and Spain have been spending money in 
Louisiana for which its trade has never in- 
demnified them. ... I will be moderate, in 
consideration of the necessity in which I am 
of making the sale. I want 50,000,000 francs, 
and for less than that sum I \vill not treat ; I 
would rather make a desperate attempt to 
keep these fine countries. To-morrow you 
shall have your full powers." 

Napoleon paused here, but when one of 
his hearers, probably Marbois himself, spoke 
135 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

of tlie difficulties of selling "what the Ger- 
mans call souls," he continued : " There you 
go, with your ideology — the rights of nature 
and of man. But I need money to make 
war on a nation which has it in abundance. 
Send your doctrines to London. I am sure 
they will be the object of great admiration 
there — and that they will not pay the least 
attention to them when it is a question of 
seizing the best parts of Asia." Here no 
doubt, though Marbois does not report it, 
came the hard scornful laugh. 

" Perhaps it may be objected," he went 
on, "that the Americans will be found too 
powerful for Europe in two or three cen- 
turies. But my foresight takes no count of 
terrors at a distance. Moreover, you can 
look to the future for dissensions in the 
bosom of the Union. The confederations 
which are called perpetual only endure until 
one of the parties to the contract finds reason 
to break it. It is against present dangers to 
which we are exposed by the colossal powers 
of England that I wish to provide a safe- 
guard." 

Marbois making no reply, Napoleon con- 
136 



Louisiana Sold 

tinued : " Mr. Monroe is on the point of ar- 
riving. To this minister, going two thousand 
leagues from his constituents, the President 
must have given, after defining the object of 
his mission, secret instructions, more extensive 
than the ostensible authorization of Congress, 
for the stipulation of the payments to be 
made. Neither this minister nor his colleague 
is prepared for a decision which goes infinitely 
beyond anything that they are about to ask 
of us. Begin by making them the overture 
without any subterfuge. You will acquaint 
me day by day, hour by hour, of your progress. 
The cabinet of London is informed of the 
measures adopted at Washington, but it can 
have no suspicion of those which I am now 
taking. Observe the greatest secrecy, and 
recommend it to the American ministers ; 
they have not less interest than ourselves in 
conforming to this counsel." 

Marbois began conferences at once with 
Livingston, who had no power to act. The 
first object of Livingston's mission, it will be 
remembered, had been to obtain satisfaction 
for what were known as the French spoliation 
claims — demands of payment for damages 
137 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

inflicted upon American merchants in John 
Adams's time, when warlike operations be- 
tween the United States and France actually 
began. The postponements and supercilious- 
ness of Talleyrand had irritated Livingston 
much, and he felt at first that the new propo- 
sitions as to Louisiana were only to gain 
time. The two negotiators, however, got at 
last upon the topic of the amount to be paid, 
Livingston regarding as excessive anything 
beyond 30,000,000 francs, to which, however, 
might possibly be added a sum to be paid as 
indemnity to Americans for the spoliations. 
Though Napoleon had first mentioned 50,- 
000,000 francs as a proper amount, he after- 
ward put it at 100,000,000, a sum which Mar- 
bois believed excessive. In the midst of the 
bargaining Monroe arrived at Havre, and 
reached Paris on April 12th. Livingston was 
still hopeless, in spite of the representations 
of Marbois, and declared that he wished the 
proposition made by Ross in the Senate, to 
descend upon New Orleans with an army, 
had been adopted. "We must use force. 
Let us first acquire the country and negotiate 
afterward." 

138 



Louisiana Sold 

Next day Marbois met the two Americans, 
to both, of whom he was an old friend. In 
Livingston's letter of that date is a graphic 
touch, telling how, as the two Americans 
were at dinner, Marbois was descried from 
the window walking in the garden, and at 
once invited in. The conference was greatly- 
helped by their pleasant relation, though each 
negotiator had careful regard for the interests 
of his Government. As the First Consul's 
determination became apparent, to part with 
the whole of Louisiana, the Americans were 
astonished. The negotiation had three ob- 
jects : First, the cession; second, the price; and 
third, the satisfaction of the spoliation claims. 
It was determined to make three treaties. 
As to the cession, Monroe and Livingston 
were embarrassed by the fact that their in- 
structions related only to the mouths and 
east bank of the Mississippi ; also, that there 
was no opportunity for ascertaining the dis- 
position of the people of Louisiana. They 
soon, however, took the enlarged responsi- 
bility, going so far as to augment the sum 
they had been authorized to offer. There was 
no time for delay; decision must come at 
139 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

once or the English would be at New Orleans. 
The American envoys were at first troubled 
by the vagueness of the boundaries of the 
territory to be ceded, to a large extent utterly 
unexplored. This they became reconciled to ; 
and when Marbois spoke of the indefiniteness 
to Napoleon, he bluffly declared ^' that if an 
obscurity did not exist it w^ould be well to 
put one there." 

A stipulation which Marbois says was 
proposed by Napoleon himself, provided that 
the Louisianians should straightway be in- 
corporated into the Union, with all the rights 
of American citizens. When left to his nat- 
ural disposition he was, says the minister, 
always inclined to an elevated and gener- 
ous justice. "Let the Louisianians know," 
he cried, "that we separate ourselves from 
them with regret ; that we stipulate for 
everything they can desire ; and let them here- 
after, happy in their independence, recollect 
that they have been Frenchmen, and that 
France in cediner them has secured for them 
advantages which no European power, how- 
ever paternal, could have afforded. Let them 
retain love for us; and may our common 
140 



Louisiana Sold 

origin, language, and customs perpetuate the 
love." 

Marbois dwells upon tlie treaty of cession 
article by article. Tlie pledge given to Spain 
at San Ildefonso, that Louisiana should never 
be alienated by France without Spain's con- 
sent, he declares was disregarded because 
despatch was imperative, and there was no 
time to consult Madrid. Really, Napoleon 
now assumed that Spain belonged to him to 
do as he pleased. The time was not far dis- 
tant now when Joseph Bonaparte was to be 
seated upon the Spanish throne. 

The matter of the price w^as made the 
subject of a second convention, signed the 
same day. Marbois put the sum at 80,000,- 
000 francs. To this the Americans at last 
agreed, on condition that 20,000,000 of the 
sum should be applied to the extinction of 
the spoliation claims. These claims were 
made the subject of a third agreement. All 
three agreements were arranged and ready 
for signing April 30th, the conferences be- 
tween the three friends being throughout 
harmonious and frank to a degree unusual in 
diplomatic affairs. Four days were taken for 
141 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

the preparation of copies in French and Eng- 
lish, so that the actual signing was slightly 
deferred.* 

Livingston in especial showed himself to 
be a good and able man throughout the nego- 
tiation. He alone had been ready to take 
the whole of Louisiana, a thing which Madi- 
son recoiled from, and which the people of 
the Union did not at first favor. Now that 
all was successfully accomplished, there came 
an interesting moment, which Livingston, 
rising beyond himself, with a vision broader 
than that of any other statesman of the time, 
signalized by an eloquent outburst, full of a 
spirit nobly prophetic. Says Marbois : " As 
soon as they had signed they rose, shook 
hands, and Livingston, expressing the satis- 
faction of all, said: ^The treaty we have 
signed has not been brought about by finesse 
nor dictated by force. Equally advantageous 
to both the contracting parties, it will change 
vast solitudes into a flourishing country. To- 
day the United States take their place among 
the powers of the first rank. Moreover, if 

* See Appendices B and C for Napoleon's order for the sale, 
and the text of the treaties of cession and payment. 
142 



Louisiana Sold 

wars are inevitable, France will have in the 
new world a friend increasing year by year 
in power, which can not fail to become puis- 
sant and respected on all the seas of the earth. 
These treaties will become a guarantee of 
peace and good- will between commercial 
states. The instrument we have signed will 
cause no tears to flow. It will prepare cen- 
turies of happiness for innumerable genera- 
tions of the human race. The Mississippi 
and the Missouri will see them prosper and 
increase in the midst of equality, under just 
laws, freed from the errors of superstition, 
from the scourges of bad government, and 
truly worthy of the regard and the care of 
Providence.' " 

But shall we err if we say that in this 
great transaction the supreme figure is that 
of the prince of adventurers, who, in connec- 
tion with the affair, declared himself for the 
first time, independent of his family, of his 
Parliament, and of most of his advisers, 
grasping at the imperial scepter, which a few 
months later he was destined fully to pos- 
sess? Though the statesmanship of Jeffer- 
son in this juncture was creditable both to 
143 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

his head and to his heart, his weight in bring- 
ing to us Louisiana was not great. Of the 
negotiators Livingston deserves high fame 
for persistency, courage, and far-reaching 
views. It may well be believed that his 
pleas and remonstrances, scanned by Napo- 
leon, affected the great result. He was cha- 
grined, as we have seen, that to some extent 
his credit was eclipsed by Monroe, who 
arrived on the scene at the last minute only. 
He had labored, and another had entered 
into his labors. Monroe, on his part, de- 
clared that neither he nor Livingston affected 
the great result. It was the First Consul 
who was all in all. Napoleon, so haughtily 
great and self-confident, was not slow to as- 
sume the credit. When he signed the treaties 
he declared that this accession of territory 
which he had bestowed " assures forever the 
power of the United States, and I have given 
England a rival who, sooner or later, will 
humble her pride." 

On May 2 2d Napoleon signed the ratifica- 
tion, and on that day hostilities began in the 
great new war. The 60,000,000 francs of 
purchase-money, which he had at first in- 
144 



Louisiana Sold 

tended for peaceful uses, having projected 
the construction of ^ve canals, were applied 
to prejDarations for the invasion of England, 
which came to naught. 

If the present narrative is up to this point 
trustworthy, it is plain that the coming to 
the United States of Louisiana, the western 
half of the vast Mississippi Basin, was a 
piece of French or Napoleonic statesmanship, 
Jefferson and his negotiators obtaining, to 
their astonishment, something for which they 
had neither labored nor asked — something, 
indeed, which they had not at all desired — 
an acquisition regarded as embarrassing far 
more often than as a thins: to be welcomed. 
If Louisiana had not come to us through 
Napoleon, would it have come to us at all ? 
Perhaj)s so — probably so. Americans of our 
time, cognizant as they are of what has come 
to pass through the unmeasured dynamic 
forces wi'apped up in our Union, easily take 
on the belief that nothing can stop us. That 
the Union should gain in the eighteenth cen- 
tury the eastern half of the Mississippi Basin 
was a thing inevitable ; just as inevitable 
10 145 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

was tlie gaining of the western half, no mat- 
ter in whose hands it lay — and so on and on, 
Texas, Oregon, California, Alaska, the Phil- 
ippines — to absorb them all is but our mani- 
fest destiny, a consummation foreordained 
for us. But disengaging ourselves for a 
moment from the national enthusiasm, let us 
inquire coolly what would have been likely 
to happen if Napoleon had been foolish, and 
persisted in his plan of building up a New 
France in America. He came to believe that 
he could not keep such a colony out of the 
hands of England. Livingston, too, believed 
that a consequence of persistence on the part 
of Napoleon would be an English occupation 
of the west bank of the Mississippi. He 
speaks of a '' Gibraltar " at Pensacola answer- 
ing to Quebec, and a close and populous 
cordon of British settlements uniting the two 
strongholds. No two men were better able 
than they to Judge. Certainly it was prob- 
able. We should have had a Canada to the 
west of us, as we have a Canada to the 
north; and England, it may well be noted, 
is a dilferent kind of a neighbor from Spain 
or even France. It is an old cry that Canada 
146 



Louisiana Sold 

must inevitably fall to us ; yet Canada was 
never less likely to fall to us, never more 
impervious to our approaches, never more set 
and determined in her British loyalty, than 
at the present moment. Can we be sure that 
a Canada to the west of us would have been 
any more yielding before the United States 
approach ? And if unyielding, what a re- 
straint it might have been upon our expan- 
sion ! 

But nothing is idler in the affairs of na- 
tions and of individuals than speculation 
upon what might have been. Napoleon 
tossed into the arms of the unexpectant and 
greatly astounded Jefferson the possession 
which France could not keep, believing it to 
be the best disposition which could be made 
of it, looking to the interests of France. 
Could those actors only have seen what a 
century was to bring forth ! 



147 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PAETY WEANGLE OVEE THE PUECHASE 

Jeffeeson was greatly embarrassed when 
news arrived from his envoys. A meteorite 
by the sudden nod of an Olympian had fallen 
at his feet, he meanwhile scarcely more than 
a surprised spectator. Instead of the river- 
mouth, the one town, and the little stretch 
of territory he had sought to gain, an area 
doubling that of the United States had come 
into his hands; instead of the $2,000,000 
which Monroe had been authorized to spend, 
$15,000,000 were called for. Had there been 
no hostile criticism, the perplexity of the 
President would have been great ; but the 
opposition was alert and able, and made 
the most of its opportunity. The Federal- 
ists, whose numbers and influence, though 
much diminished, were still formidable, de- 
nounced and ridiculed the transaction in the 
148 



Party Wrangle Over the Purchase 

most Tinmeasured way. That the opposition 
would be energetic and crafty, demanding of 
the administration a summons to all its re- 
sources, was plain from w^hat had preceded. 
At the end of 1802, at the time of the edict 
of Morales, Gaynor Griswold, of New York, 
leader of the Federalists in the House of Kep- 
resentatives, had demanded papers and docu- 
ments relative to the conditions of the cession 
of Louisiana by Spain to France ; and when 
the demand was denied by the majority, he 
forthwith introduced resolutions to the fol- 
lowing effect : That the United States were 
entitled to the free navigation of the Missis- 
sippi ; that right having been obstructed by 
Morales, it was the duty of the House to 
inquire how it might be restored and main- 
tained. The tone of the resolutions was so 
zealous and peremptory that the Democrats 
feared a stealing of their own thunder. What 
if the West should come to regard the Fed- 
eralists as the special champions of their in- 
terests ! It w^as a poaching on the Demo- 
cratic preserves that must be at once headed 
off. Griswold's resolutions were voted down. 
The two parties, indeed, were alike in their 
149 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 



aim ; but tlie Democrats, influenced by the 
spirit of Jefferson, were for mastering tlie 
difficulty by means of ne- 
gotiation, while tlie Fed- 
eralists were ready for 
war. Now it was, that 
while Jefferson appointed 
Monroe, sending him to 
France and Spain with 
his $2,000,000, to get 
round the trouble by a 
bargain, Eoss, of Penn- 
sylvania, the Federalist, 
moved, as has been nar- 
rated, in the Senate the 
50,000 men and $5,000,000 for the immediate 
seizure of New Orleans and the river-mouth. 
In dealing with the danger which the ap- 
proach of France brought to the United 
States, Jefferson and his party had shown a 
wiser and humaner spirit than did the oppo- 
sition. Now in the later stage of the affair, 
when the transfer of Louisiana by France 
to America had come about, it is the Jeffer- 
sonian policy which we from this distance 
must commend; for the Federalists became 
150 




Party Wrangle Over the Purchase 

turbulent and factious. To this day in old 
New England families tlie tradition persists 
of the rancor with which Jefferson was re- 
garded. There could be no good, so thought 
the friends of John Adams, in anything his 
great rival had done, and the country would 
never be safe until they were again in power. 
Incorporation of foreign territory was uncon- 
stitutional in the extreme, and impolitic in 
the extreme. The East might become de- 
populated through an immigration that might 
be expected to set in into the Purchase. Se- 
cession of the trans-Mississippi country might 
certainly be looked for : there could never be 
anything in common between the men of the 
plains and the men of the coast. Then how 
vast was the load imposed upon the country 
by the $15,000,000 and more about to go to 
the coffers of Napoleon ! McMaster gives a 
vivid resume of the newspaper outpourings on 
this point: $15,000,000 as a price for a wil- 
derness ! Maine had been sold by Sir Ferdi- 
nando Gorges for j£ 1,2 50, and Pennsylvania 
had cost William Penn but a trifle over 
£5,000. Fifteen million dollars ! You can 
say it in a breath ; you can ^\Tite it in a 
151 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

few strokes. But what does it mean? 
Weigli it, and there wll be 433 tons of 
solid silver. It would take 866 wagons to 
draw it. The wagons in line, each occupy- 
ing 3 rods, would stretch out 5^ miles. If 
a man were to set out to fill the wagons, at 
the rate of 16 a day it would take him 2 
months. Pile up dollar on dollar, reckoning 
9 to an inch, the pile would be 3 miles high. 
It would load 25 sloops; it would pay an 
army of 25,000 men 40 shillings a week for 
25 years. Apportioned among the popula- 
tion, it would give men, women, and children 
$3 apiece. All the coin in the country, gold 
and silver, would fall far short of such a sum. 
Stock must be created, and for fifteen years 
to come $2,465 a day must be paid as in- 
terest. Make the $15,000,000 a fund, and 
the interest would support forever 1,800 free 
schools, allowing 50 scholars and $500 to 
each school. Who is to benefit by the trans- 
action ? The South and West, who will j)ay 
no share of the debt, because the tax on 
whisky has been removed.* 

* McMaster, History of the People of the United States, 
Yol. ii, p. 630. 

152 



Party Wrangle Over the Purchase 

There was call for all the good sense, 
calmness, and poise which the administration 
could muster. Neither Jefferson nor his ad- 
visers were found wanting. In their hearts 
they felt there was good ground for criticism. 
What Madison thought of taking Louisiana 
has been shown.* But the step had been 
taken in this strange unforeseen way, and 
the administration gathered itself together to 
make the best of the situation. The mass of 
the people, in spite of the outcry, pronounced 
the purchase a bargain, and as the year drew 
toward a close, everywhere but in New Eng- 
land excitement subsided into satisfaction 
over the great thing that had been achieved. 

As to the constitutional matter, Jefferson 
himself, as a strict constructionist, w^as in 
grave doubt. He had once laid it down that 
Congress has only two kinds of powers : 1, 
such as are expressly delegated ; 2, such as 
are necessary to carry the delegated powers 
into effect. Into neither of these kinds of 
powers could come the acquisition of foreign 
territory. In signing the treaty, he felt that 
he was doing an act beyond the Consti- 

* See a7ite, pp. 63, 64. 
153 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

tution, and his first recourse was to a plan 
for securing an amendment which would 
make his conduct legal. But no amendment 
he could devise gained the approval of his 
Cabinet or his friends. At last an adviser 
said to him: "The Constitution needs no 
amendment ; the treaty -making power covers 
the case," and he persuaded the President to 
make no public expression. Jefferson was 
reluctant to take this course, but when Con- 
gress convened, on October 1 7th, his Message 
contained not a word as to the need of an 
amendment. Two days later the treaties 
were formally ratified, the Federalists oppos- 
ing violently but vainly. 

Promptly as possible, on October 19th, 
Gaynor Griswold again stood up in opposi- 
tion, arguing that the Louisiana treaty was 
unconstitutional, first, because the treaty -mak- 
ing power does not extend to incorporating 
foreign soil and a foreign people into the 
United States. The words " new States may 
be admitted by the Congress into the Union " 
he declared meant new States carved out of 
territory belonging to the United States at 
the time the Union was founded. But grant- 
154 



Party Wrangle Over the Purchase 

ing for tlie moment that such incorporations 
were right, it belonged certainly to Congress, 
not to the President and Senate. Second, 
argued Griswold, the seventh article of the 
treaty gave to ships of Spain and France the 
right to enter Louisiana ports paying no more 
duty than was imposed on American ships. 
Elsewhere foreign ships must pay more. 
New Orleans, then, was to enjoy special priv- 
ileges over other ports. But the Constitu- 
tion provides that "no preference shall be 
given by any regulation of commerce to ports 
of one State over another." For a third count, 
Griswold urged that the President and Sen- 
ate had tried to regulate commerce with 
France and Spain, thereby usurping power 
that belonged to Congress. Having stated 
his points, the Federalist leader dwelt on the 
impolicy of the treaty. What troubles were 
certain to arise in dealing with so vast an 
area, for the most part a wilderness ; and 
where peopled, having inhabitants so foreign 
in tongue, manners, and religion ! 

The Kepublicans were not slow in reply- 
ing. The right to acquire territory, said they, 
is a sovereign right, which belonged to the 
155 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

individual States at the formation of the 
Union. Territoiy can be acquired only by 
conquest or purchase. Conquest came of the 
war power, purchase of the treaty-making 
power. But the States had expressly sur- 
rendered to the general Government the 
powers of levying war and making treaties — 
in the latter case establishing that the powder 
shall be exercised by the President and Sen- 
ate. As to the preference given to New Or- 
leans, the constitutional prohibition relates to 
" the ports of one State." Louisiana is not a 
State ; it is a territory bought by the United 
States. The Republicans, too, spoke of the 
promotion of the general welfare. To increase 
our domain, said they, is conducive to that. 
Why should the increase not take place ? 

That the general welfare w^as promoted 
by the purchase the opposition would by no 
means admit. It is not denied, they said, 
that we can purchase and hold Louisiana ; 
but it is denied that it or any foreign coun- 
try can be incorporated into the Union by 
treaty. Now Louisiana is ceded to us on 
the express condition of such incorporation 
— an unconstitutional provision which must 
156 



Party Wrangle Over the Purchase 



cause the treaty to fail. But the Repub- 
licans were determined the treaty should not 
fail. The House being in Committee of the 
Whole, three resolutions were carried by a 
vote of 90 to 25. First, that provision should 
be made to carry the treaty into effect. Sec- 
ond, that the matter of a provisional govern- 
ment should be referred to a special com- 
mittee. Third, that the 
Committee of Ways and 
Means should be charged 
with raising the purchase- 
money. 

When the matter came 
up in the Senate, each side 
used the same arguments, 
nothing new appearing 
until Timothy Pickering, ,^^^^ ' / 
of Massachusetts, made the vl/ 

extremest statement possible of the rights of 
the States. He declared that to his mind the 
treaty was unconstitutional because it stipu- 
lated something no power existing could carry 
out. The third article read: "The inhabit- 
ants of the ceded territory shall be incorpo- 
rated into the Union of the United States." 
157 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Who was competent to carry that out ? Not 
the President and Senate ; not the President 
and Congress ; not an amendment to the Con- 
stitution passed by a two-thirds vote of both 
Houses and ratified by three-quarters of the 
States. He believed the assent of each and 
every State was necessary before a foreign 
country could join the Union. The case was 
like that of a business house where the assent 
of each j)artner must be got before a new 
partner can be admitted. When the Consti- 
tution declared that new States might be ad- 
mitted by Congress, the words meant domes- 
tic, not foreign States. No acquisition of 
foreign territory was contemplated or pro- 
vided for, and ought therefore to be regarded 
as impossible. This speech of Pickering was 
an interesting contribution to the discussion, 
but it produced no effect. The vote stood 
twenty-six to five in favor of the treaty. 

Both Federalists and Republicans were 
agreed as to the right of the President and 
Senate to buy foreign soil ; and the Repub- 
licans carried it overwhelmingly that the 
President and Senate could by the treaty- 
power incorporate foreign territory into the 
158 



Party Wrangle Over the Purchase 

United States. A new wrangle came up over 
tlie question how the new territory should 
be governed. The proposition having been 
made that the President should administer 
the territory provisionally until Congress 
should arrange for a new government — the 
old institutions for a time persisting — the 
constitutional battle became as bitter as ever. 
Jefferson, declared the Federalists, was to 
step into the shoes of Carlos IV, for a time 
to administer a tyranny — therefore legalizing 
on American soil Spanish despotism. This 
was tearing the Constitution to tatters. More- 
over, since he was to appoint all executive, 
judicial, and legislative oflficers, and determine 
how they should act, this was equipping the 
President with the three powers — executive, 
judicial, and legislative — an enormity of the 
largest dimensions. The Republicans were 
ready with replies. To try to make out the 
President to be a Spanish despot was a gross 
exaggeration of the situation. As to his ex- 
ercise of the three powers, it would not exist ; 
he appointed the men who exercise them, 
doing nothing himself. But granting that he 
did, it would be no infringement ; the Con- 
159 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

stitution had reference to States, not territo- 
ries. Indiana and Mississippi were cited as 
precedents, in wliich territories presidential 
appointees, governors and judges, exercised 
tlie three powers, and none had complained. 
The opposition were voted down with little 
ceremony. The bill for a provisional govern- 
ment became a law October 31st. Soon after 
a bill was passed authorizing the creation of 
stock to the amount of $11,250,000. The 
decision left New England especially full of 
discontent, and nearly ready for secession. 
The balance of power was inclining, they 
thought, quite too strongly toward the South 
and West. Federalists and Eepublicans bat- 
tled fiercely, but the doctrines of both had 
this in common : they were fatal to the old 
status of things. The interpretation of the 
Constitution became enlarged, so that hence- 
forth the spirit and not the letter was ap- 
pealed to. That it possessed latent powers 
became admitted, so that it grew at once 
elastic, adaptable therefore to a nation con- 
stantly growing in numbers and might, a 
change in the American point of view des- 
tined to affect the future profoundly. 
160 



CHAPTEE X 

THE UNITED STATES IN POSSESSION 

Just as the year 1803 was ending, New 
Orleans became the scene of an ever-memor- 
able ceremony. Following the pleasant and 
picturesque account of Miss Grace King,* we 
are told that the proclamation of Pierre 
Clement Laussat had filled the people with 
" the delirium of extreme felicity " ; but tak- 
ing note of Laussat's republican denunciation 
of the Spanish regime^ the address of welcome 
continued : " We should be unworthy of what 
is to us a source of much pride if we did not 
acknowledo:e that we have no cause of com- 
plaint against the Spanish Government. We 
have never groaned under the yoke of an 
oppressive despotism. We have become 
bound together by family connections and 
by the bonds of friendship. Let Spaniards 

* Xew Orleans, Chapter IX. 

11 161 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

have the untrammeled enjoyment of all the 
property they may own on the soil that has 
become the land of freedom, and let us share 
with them like brothers the blessings of our 
new position.'' 

A month or so later, the Marquis of Casa 
Calvo arrived, to assist the governor, Sal- 
cedo, in turning the province over to France. 
A time of festivity followed, the traditions of 
which still persist, the courtly Spanish gran- 
dees being determined to make the latter day 
of their rule brilliant ; and Laussat and his 
wife, well versed in the ways of Paris, vieing 
with their hosts in the social rivalry. But 
the Ursuline nuns were afflicted, feeling only 
terror at the prospect of passing under the 
sway of a power which a few years before 
had ostentatiously driven out religion and 
maltreated its ministers. The Mother Supe- 
rior begged to be allowed to retire with her 
sisterhood to some point under the protection 
of his Catholic Majesty of Spain, and Ha- 
vana was assigned. Laussat tried in vain to 
explain and palliate, while promising for the 
future full protection ; an aged nun de- 
nounced him and what he was supposed to 
162 



The United States in Possession 

represent. The people, too, pleaded, the 
mayor going down upon his knees to beg 
that the children and the city might not be 
abandoned. But nine nuns, however, out of 
the twenty-five could be won. On Whit- 
sunday, at the firing of the evening gun, the 
sixteen who were to go, came forth hooded 
and veiled. Their old pupils thronged the 
garden as they passed through ; their slaves 
knelt about the gateway ; the dignitaries and 
the humbler people followed them tearfully 
to the w aterside. 

Victor was expected any day, and each 
man and woman had ready the tricolored 
cockade, which was to be assumed as soon as 
the Spanish flag descended. But like thun- 
der out of a clear sky came at last, by a 
vessel from Bordeaux, the new^s that the 
province had been sold to the United States ; 
and no one was more surprised than Laussat, 
who presently read in a formal document his 
appointment to conduct the ceremony of sur- 
render. It was felt that the colony had no 
recourse, and the prefect faced his task val- 
iantly. On November 30th came the cere- 
mony of the cession by Spain to France, a 
163 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Frencli mayor and municipal council taking 
the place of tlie alcalde and his suite. Seven- 
teen days later arrived the American commis- 
sioners with an escort of trooj)s, encamping 
two miles outside the city. 

In New Orleans still stands a building 
which one hundred years ago surpassed 
probably in beauty every other civic struc- 
ture in America — the old Cabildo, the meet- 
ing-place of the municipal council, which also 
bore the name Cabildo. Miss Grace King 
says it is still pictures(][ue and imposing, a 
dignified meeting - place for the Supreme 
Court of the State. The great stone stair- 
ways, majestic and easy of ascent, are now 
blackened and worn, the noble front chan- 
neled and pitted like an old man's face. The 
council chamber of the Cabildo and the bal- 
cony adjacent, were the scene of the formal 
retrocession of Louisiana from Spain to 
Prance, and also of the event so much more 
momentous to us, the ceremony in which 
France delivered Louisiana into the keeping 
of the United States. The French had taken 
possession of the city, the tricolor replacing 
on the tall flagstaff in the Place d'Armes the 
164 



The United States in Possession 

banner of Spain. The Spanish officials had 
withdrawn with all the stately circumstance 
that had surrounded them. On the 20th of 
December, Laussat having been in possession 
but twenty days, the pageant took place. It 
was a day so full of sunshine that the Amer- 
icans interpreted it as a favorable omen for 
their occupation, contrasting the radiance 
with the rain and darkness in which three 
weeks before the French had assumed power. 
Chartres Street and the Place d'Armes, 
through which the procession was to pass, 
were thronged early. No one needed to rise 
at an untimely hour, or go far. In that sim- 
ple time the world was up at daybreak; and 
so compact was the town that it was scarcely 
more than a stone's throw from the most dis- 
tant habitation to the cathedral in the cen- 
ter. There was indeed outside the ramparts 
the Faubourg Sainte Marie, the American 
quarter at the riverside, with a rough and 
turbulent population of flatboat and rafts- 
men, unstable and therefore irresponsible, 
who had drifted down from far-off Kentucky 
and Tennessee, and were loud and voluble 
as to their right of deposit and determina- 
165 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

tion to hold open the mouths of the Missis- 
sippi. The Faubourg Sainte Marie had long 
been a terror both to the Spanish Governor 
and the American President ; for precisely 
there were focused the spirit and the agita- 
tion which had kept the Dons on the alert 
against the filibusters, and had caused Jeffer- 
son to send Monroe to Paris to effect, if pos- 
sible, a peaceful solution by purchase. 

At nine o'clock the provincial militia 
began to gather in the Place d'Armes, to 
review whom Laussat, representative of the 
First Consul, stood on the central balcony of 
the Cabildo. In that day the square was a 
wide area upon which an army might easily 
maneuver; and the eye unobstructed could 
range up and down the river in the back- 
ground, flowing in a wide crescent before the 
town, whence comes to the town its second 
name. A fleet of vessels lay in the stream, 
the masts and yards dressed with flags ; and 
to the right and left, on shore, handsome 
buildings with high, red-tiled Spanish roofs, 
balconies and gratings of wrought-iron work, 
twining and interlacing like vines, stood fa- 
cing the open space. These were the choice 
166 



The United States in Possession 

locations, and whatever of architectural dis- 
play the little community was able to achieve, 
was ranged here where it might best be seen. 
A French traveler who was present and stood 
at the side of Laussat, describes the scene, 
and says he talked with the prefect about the 
cession as they awaited the arrival of the 
Americans. What Laussat really felt we know 
from his despatches. "The Americans," he 
wrote, "have given $15,000,000 for Louisiana; 
they would have given $50,000,000 rather than 
not possess it. ... In a few years the coun- 
try as far as the Rio Brazos will be in a state 
of cultivation. New Orleans mil then have 
a population of from 30,000 to 50,000 souls, 
and the country will produce sugar enough 
to sup]3ly America and part of Europe. . . . 
What a magnificent New France have we 
lost ! . . . The people are naturally gentle 
though touchy, proud, and brave. They have 
seen themselves rejected for the second time 
from the bosom of their mother-country. . . . 
Their interpretation of the cession, and their 
comments on it, show too clearly the extreme 
bitterness of their discontent. . . . Neverthe- 
less, they have become tolerably well disposed 
167 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

toward passing under the new government. 
. . . There are advantages in the Constitution 
of the United States of which it will be im- 
possible to prevent them from experiencing 
the benefit. . . . And being once freed from 
her colonial fetters, it would be unnatural to 
suppose that Louisiana would ever willingly 
resume them." 

Shortly before noon sounded the signal- 
gun that announced the departure of the 

Americans from their 
camp. Another shot an- 
nounced that they had 
marched through the 
Tchoupitoulas Gate ; 
and the French batter- 
ies, manned, however, 
by Spanish artillery- 
men, fired a salute of 
twenty-four guns. On 
the stroke of twelve the 
Americans marched u^^- 
on the Place d'Armes 
into the presence of the crowd and the pre- 
fect. At the head rode two characters of 
importance — Wilkinson, so long commander- 
168 




^^ i,^^^ c^^%y^ 



The United States in Possession 

in-cliief of the army of the United States, a 
figure beyond almost all others in our history 
deserving execration and contempt, and the 
worthy Claiborne, Governor of the Mississippi 
territory, and destined now to a niche in our 
story as the first Governor of Louisiana. Be- 
hind them rode a troop of dragoons in red 
uniforms ; there was also a train of artillery, 
some companies of infantry, and an escort of 
grenadiers from the city's militia. 

The Americans drew up opposite the 
French formations, and the commissioners, 
dismounting, ascended to the council-hall, 
where they were impressively received. A 
throng of dignitaries, ecclesiastic and lay, 
greeted them with gravity. The robes of 
churchmen, the armor of Spanish cavaliers, 
the silken attire of rich citizens, swept and 
sounded as they moved back and forth in the 
salutations. Laussat at last led the way to 
the balcony, to a chair of state, to the right 
and left of which were lower seats. Before 
the upturned faces of the people he took his 
place in the center, while Claiborne sat at his 
right and Wilkinson at his left. In front 
stood the secretary of the commission. Laussat 
169 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

presently opened the ceremony by stating 
briefly the object of the assembly, after which 
secretaries read the treaty of cession in both 
English and French. Laussat himself read 
his credentials, the authorization of the First 
Consul, through which he had received from 
Salcedo the province, and through which he 
was empowered now to surrender it to the 
new Government. Claiborne then read Jeffer- 
son's command to him to receive the province, 
after which followed from the prefect the for- 
mal announcement of the alienation ; Louisi- 
ana, with all its dependencies, was committed 
to the new hands under the same limits and 
conditions that had been laid down in the 
treaty of San Ildefonso. He then delivered 
to Claiborne the city's keys, declaring with a 
loud voice : " I proclaim, in virtue of the 
powers with which I am invested, and the 
commission with which I am charged by the 
First Consul, that all citizens and inhabitants 
of Louisiana are from this moment relieved 
from their oath of fidelity to the French 
Republic." He then caused Claiborne to 
take the high central seat while he sat at the 
side. 

170 



The United States in Possession 

It was now tlie turn of Governor Clai- 
borne. Speaking in English, he offered the 
people "his congratulations on the event 
which irrevocably fixed their political exist- 
ence, and no longer 
left it open to the 
caprices of chance," 
assuring them that 
the United States 
would receive them 
as brethren, and that 
they would be pro- 
tected in the enjoy- 
ment of their liberty, 
property, and relig- 
ion ; that their com- 
merce would be fa- 
vored, their agriculture encouraged. The sec- 
retaries then read the proces-verhal of the 
transfer in French and English, which the 
commissioners, having signed and sealed, for- 
mally interchanged. 

And now while the concourse looked on, 

and the commissioners stood at the front 

of the balcony, came the closing ceremony. 

Till this time, in the sunshine, spread abroad 

171 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 

in the mild breeze, the great flag of France 
had floated above all, at the top of its staff. 
Slowly now it descended, trembling, flutter- 
ing, never more to w^ave on the continent of 
North America. 

What heart does not feel the deep pathos 
of that moment ! The descent of the flag 
that day indicated that all the magnificent 
striving had come to naught. In vain had 
the strong-souled Champlain held the rock 
at Quebec through long decades of peril and 
discouragement ; in vain had been the thou- 
sand-league journeys of the intrepid La Salle 
by forest-trail, by stream and lake ; in vain 
had La Verendrye opposed his breast, marked 
by the wounds received at Malplaquet, to As- 
sinniboines and Dakotas in far Manitoba ; 
in vain the splendid soldiership and bloody 
death of Montcalm. Since that moment the 
islets of St. Pierre and Miquelon — dots of rock 
in the surf beating upon Newfoundland — 
have been the sole remnants of that far-reach- 
ing New France to establish which so much 
genius and heroism had been lavished. As 
the tricolor came slowly down, the Stars and 
Stripes as slowly ascended. Midway of the 
1T2 



The United States in Possession 

staff they paused a moment, mingling their 
folds and colors. Presently the flag of the 
Union was at the top of the staif, and salvos 
of artillery and musketry rent the air. The 
multitude shouted ; the ladies, eyried in the 
gracefully wrought balconies, waved and ap- 
plauded. Such, according to Miss King, is 
the tradition; but the shouts and saluting 
were probably more for the flag which de- 
scended than for that which rose. A French 
oflScer received the tricolor in his arms as it 
came to the ground, and wrapping it about 
his body, strode away with it to the barracks. 
The crowd fell in behind as at a funeral, the 
American soldiers presented arms as they 
passed, and men in the street uncovered as at 
a great solemnity. 

Laussat presented graciously to the crowd 
his successor, and Claiborne delivered his in- 
augural. " Louisianians, my fellow-citizens ! " 
he exclaimed. But his words were unintel- 
lio^ible : and had he made himself understood 
there wouldhave been little response to his wel- 
come and congratulations. The new governor 
was able and honest, but always a stranger. 
He never engaged the sympathies of the 
173 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

people over whom he was set, and the Anglo- 
Saxon polity w^hich he introduced was long a 
burden rather than a blessing. 



As the people of Louisiana were reluctant, 
the treatment they met often in their new rela- 
tions was for a long time the reverse of cordial. 
January 14, 1811, in Congress, the question 
for deliberation being the admission of the 
present State of Louisiana, then called Or- 
leans, into the Union, Josiah Quincy, of Mas- 
sachusetts, made a speech which it is curious 
to look back upon."^ 

"I address you, Mr. Speaker," he said, 
" with an anxiety and distress of mind with 
me wholly unprecedented. To me it appears 
that this measure would justify a revolution 
in this country. I am compelled to declare it 
as my deliberate opinion that, if this bill 
passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually 
dissolved ; that the States which compose it 
are free from their moral obligations ; and 
that, as it will be the right of all, so it will 
be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for 

* Annals of Congress, 1811. 

174 



The United States in Possession 



a separation — amicably if they can, violently 
if they must." 

Here Mr. Quincy was called to order, but, 
being suffered to proceed, went on with a 
statement of the old Federalist argument of 
1803— that the Consti- 
tution did not authorize 
the admission of foreign 
territory, but only of 
States formed from the 
territory possessed by 
the Union at the first. 
"If this bill be admit- 
ted," he exclaimed, " the 
whole space of Louisi- 
ana, greater, it is said, 
than the entire extent 
of the United States, will be a mighty thea- 
ter in which the Government assumes the 
right of exercising this unparalleled power; 
nor will it stop until the very name and 
nature of the old partners be overwhelmed 
by newcomers into the confederacy. This is 
not so much a question concerning the exer- 
cise of sovereignty as it is who shall be 
sovereign. Whether the proprietors of the 
175 




^OCjTL oZc 



OC/CyytAL^ 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

good old United States shall manage their 
own affairs in their own way, or whether 
they and their Constitution and their political 
rights shall be trampled under foot by for- 
eigners introduced through a breach of the 
Constitution. Suppose the population of the 
whole world beyond the Mississippi were to 
be brought in to form our laws, control our 
rights, and decide our destiny. Can it be 
pretended that the framers of the Constitu- 
tion would have listened to it ? They were 
not madmen. They had not taken degrees 
at the hospital of idiocy. Why, sir, I have 
already heard of six States, and some say 
there will be, at no great distance of time, 
more. I have also heard that the mouth of 
the Ohio will be far to the east of the center 
of the contemplated empire. You have no 
authority to throw the rights and liberties 
and property of this people into a hotch- 
potch of the wild men on the Missouri, nor 
with the mixed, though more respectable, race 
of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo- Americans who bask 
on the sands in the mouth of the Mississippi. 
The whole extent of Louisiana is to be cut 
up into independent States to counterbalance 
176 



The United States in Possession 

and to paralyze whatever there is of influence 
in other quarters of the Union. The gentle- 
man from Mississippi spoke the other day of 
the Mississippi as of a high road between- 
Good heavens! between what, Mr. Speaker? 
Why, the Eastern and Western States. So that 
all the countries once the extreme western 
boundary of our Union are hereafter to be 
denominated Eastern States." 

Mr. Quincy concluded with a declaration 
in which the State was exalted above the 
Union. "Sir, I confess it, the first public 
love of my heart is the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts. There is my fireside ; there are 
the tombs of my ancestors. The love of this 
Union grows out of this attachment to my 
native soil, and is rooted in it. I cherish it 
because it affords the best external hope of 
her peace, her prosperity, her independence. 
I oppose this bill from the deep conviction 
that it contains a principle incompatible with 
the liberties and safety of my country. The 
bill, if it passes, is a death-blow to the Con- 
stitution." 

Josiah Quincy's speech may appropriately 
have a place in the story of the Louisiana 
12 177 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Purchase. As the newcomers into the Union 
were long looked upon askance by many of 
their fellow-citizens into whose society they 
had been forced, so in their own hearts they 
remained unreconciled until far along in the 
century. Old soldiers of the civil war recall 
how often as they marched or sailed among 
the bayous and plantations, or as hated in- 
vaders passed through the streets of New 
Orleans, the flag of France was displayed 
from doors and windows, the householders 
behind making claim to French citizenship. 
Had the South prevailed, and the Union been 
split into the " States dissevered, discordant, 
and divided " — the nightmare which troubled 
the imagination of Daniel Webster — how nat- 
ural it would have been for that rejected 
people to seek once more the bosom that 
yearned for them though it had twice thrown 
them off ! France stood at hand with its 
troops in Mexico. Had Fate been a little 
less kind, New France, after all, might have 
been established on the Mississippi. 



178 



CHAPTER XI 

WHAT A CENTUEY HAS BROUGHT FORTH 

Claiborne, in his speech to the crowd on 
the 20th of December, had promised the peo- 
ple of Louisiana that they should never be 
transferred again. If they could have felt 
sure of that it might have conveyed some 
comfort ; for their country had in its history 
been transferred, counting its bestowal by 
Louis XIV on private owners, and the swap- 
ping back and forth between Spain and 
France, and now America, no less than six 
times. At no one of these exchanges had 
any human being possessed a definite idea of 
the boundaries of Louisiana. In 1803 the 
doubt was as great as ever. In the language 
of the treaty the cession was to be of the 
" Province of Louisiana with the same extent 
it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it 
had when France possessed it." But north, 
179 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

west, and southeast uncertainty prevailed. 
On the north Louisiana went to the sources 
of the Mississippi, but those were not at all 
ascertained ; on the northwest the mountains, 
which the eye of white man had scarcely seen, 
were supposed to be the limit, though there 
was a vague idea that the jurisdiction of the 
Bishop of New Orleans went to the Pacific ; 
if the bishopric, why not the province ? To 
the southwest why did not the discovery and 
exploration of the Texas coast by the ship- 
wrecked La Salle, who there found his grave, 
make valid a claim to the country as far as 
the Rio Grande ? The southern boundary 
was certainly the Gulf — that was a thing 
fixed in all the doubt. The Mississippi, too, 
in its upper course fixed the limit on the 
east; but on the southeast the uncertainty 
was as great as anywhere, and here the em- 
barrassment was most serious. 

Jeiferson and Madison much desired the 
Floridas, and felt that the purchase should 
include at any rate West Florida. But the 
Spaniards, outraged by the sale to the Ameri- 
cans, were determined to yield no more than 
was absolutely necessary ; indeed, were al- 
180 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 

most ready to go to war because the Ameri- 
cans had. entered into the bargain at all. 
With perfect truth they declared that the 
Floridas were no part of the cession made to 
them by the French in 1762, but that they 
had received those territories from the Eng- 
lish in 1783. In fact, the Americans had no 
just claim to anything east of a line marked 
by the river Iberville, running thence through 
Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the 
Gulf. We do not need to concern ourselves 
with the details of the disputes, which were 
not entirely settled till far along in the cen- 
tury. Florida came to the United States, but 
not through the Louisiana Purchase ; Texas 
came at a later time ; and still later, a better 
title to Oregon and Washington was dis- 
covered than that they had once been part 
of the bishopric of New Orleans. Now that 
the contentions are passed, and our ample 
Union has absorbed all that was disputed, 
the Louisiana X3urchased by us it is thought 
fair to describe as comprising New Orleans 
and its island, and the entire Mississippi Val- 
ley west of the great river, and no more; 
except that at the extreme southwest the 
181 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Sabine Eiver forms the limit, east of which 
are streams that are independent currents to 
the Gulf — not tributaries of the Mississippi. 

The territory so vaguely known had been 
parted in the Spanish day into two great di- 
visions. The Creoles then understood by 
Louisiana the area as far as New Madrid, 
what is now southern Missouri; while the 
great unknown north of that — on the edge of 
which were dots of settlement at Sainte Gene- 
vieve, St. Louis, and afar on the Missouri the 
little post of St. Charles — was known as 
Spanish Illinois, or sometimes Upper Louisi- 
ana. A rude census, taken in 1799, gives to 
Upper Louisiana a population of 6,000. To 
Louisiana proper are assigned 36,000, of 
whom all but 2,000 were to be found below 
the Arkansas. Three-fourths of the popula- 
tion of Louisiana, and seven-eighths of the 
wealth, were to be found below Pointe Coupee. 
After the purchase, the name Orleans was ap- 
plied to the portion south of the thirty-third 
parallel; this was Claiborne's jurisdiction. 
All north was known as the district of 
Louisiana, and at first made part of Indiana. 

No wonder that many stood aghast at 
182 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 

the immensity of the accession, and felt sure 
a change must come to America that might 
be disastrous. The limits being all un- 
known, imagination could work freely as to 
what they were and what was contained 
within. But whatever rein imagination 
might take, it could hardly surpass the real- 
ity. As Mr. Binger Herman puts it,* the 
area of the Louisiana Purchase, now made 
definite, is more than seven times that of 
Great Britain and Ireland ; more than four 
times that of the German empire, or of the 
Austrian empire, or of France; more than 
three times that of Spain and Portugal ; more 
than seven times that of Italy; nearly ten 
times that of Turkey and Greece. It is also 
larger than Great Britain, Germany, France, 
Spain, Portugal, and Italy combined. Tales 
regarded as absurdly extravagant were told 
of the resources of the new country, but the 
facts have surpassed all that was fancied. 
It is probable that scarcely a square mile of 
the great region will ultimately prove una- 
vailable for human uses, desert though much 
of it was long believed to be. There is no 

* Louisiana Purchase, p. 36. 

183 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

soil in the world more fertile than that bor- 
dering the Mississippi and its great affluents. 
Where the farmer fails of a chance, the 
ranchman can often find opportunity; if 
flocks and herds are out of the question, the 
lumberman is accommodated ; while in the ab- 
solute waste the miner finds coal, oil, and al- 
most every metal that can be useful to man. 

Jefferson, although the purchase had been 
made almost in spite of him, and although he 
had so many misgivings when the matter was 
finished, had yet shown himself throughout 
to be a statesman thoroughly wise and hu- 
mane. His subsequent conduct in relation 
to Louisiana was of a piece with what had 
gone before. Soon he sent a message to 
Congress embodying such information as to 
the Purchase as he was in possession of — a 
description which, although it was ridiculed 
in unmeasured terms by the opposition, was 
seldom extravagant. He spoke of tall bluffs 
faced with stone carved into what seemed a 
multitude of antique towers; of a land ex- 
traordinarily fertile ; of prairies covered with 
buffalo, which pastured on broad, unbroken 
areas of succulent grass. In these accounts 
184 



What a Century Has Brought Forth 

he hit the truth. If, furthermore, he en- 
larged on the gigantic stature of the Indians, 
it is not strange that savages so formidable 
as Sioux, Pawnees, and Comanches should 
have caused a rumor to go forth of herculean 
size. And if he described a vast mountain 
of rock salt, which glittered in the sun, and 
poured forth from its crevices waters that 
might match those of the sea, even that was 
not without foundation; though the rock 
salt of the Purchase stretches under ground 
in far-extending deposits that must be mined, 
not in heaps that lie upon the surface. 

But this message was only to quiet curi- 
osity. Full exploration he saw was necessary 
at once, and he proceeded upon a plan which 
he had already formed in the time when the 
act of Morales had excited the country. In 
resolving to send out an expedition, he did 
not anticipate for the new country any large 
increase of white inhabitants. He seems to 
have thought that the tribes east of the Mis- 
sissippi might be moved thither, and that 
with the Indian population thus recruited 
profitable trade relations might be established. 
In arranging for the exploration, he chose the 
185 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 







leaders as wisely as possible. Lewis and 
Clark were indeed ideal pathfinders ; young 

army officers, of mili- 
tary experience under 
Wayne, of excellent 
Virginia stock. Lewis, 
a kinsman of the Presi- 
dent, and for a time his 
private secretary; Clark, 
a younger brother of 
that chief hero of the 
frontier, George Rogers 
Clark — the two young 
men lacked no quality 
or accomplishment that could be useful in 
such an exploration. They set out from St. 
Louis in May, 1804, as soon as it was possible 
to get ready after the transfer of the country, 
with a company of twoscore or so, made their 
way by the Missouri and its tributaries to 
the Rocky Mountains, and thence followed 
the Columbia from its head springs to the 
Pacific. This they reached November 15, 
1805. Hence they returned in the following 
year, having let light through the wilderness. 
They had gone without harm through the 
186 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 



most dangerous tribes, and coped witli all 
natural perils with scarce a casualty. They 
lost one man by death, and Lewis, with his 
own rifle, shot one Indian, when the lives of 
the party seemed to depend upon a show 
of vigor. Their management of the savages 
whom they encountered was a marvel of 
adroitness and full of the spirit of humanity. 
Their own bearing and that of their men, 
not one of whom faltered, was full of manly 
resolution. In the annals of America there 
are few things pleas- 
anter or more credit- 
able than the story 
of Lewis and Clark. 
With their names 
should be coupled 
that of Lieutenant 
Zebulon M. Pike, 
whose expeditions, 
contemporary with 
that of Lewis and 
Clark, first into north- 
ern Minnesota, and afterward far into Colo- 
rado and south into Mexico, though under- 
taken under unfortunate auspices, the patron- 
187 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 

age of tlie worthless Wilkinson, were marked 
by skill and heroism. When Pike and Lewis 
and Clark had returned, and their maps and 
journals were spread abroad, it began to seem 
as if the American world might some time 
get within its grasp the vast domain to which 
it had fallen heir. 

But the times were full of peril and dis- 
content. The Spaniards, enraged, as they 
had reason to be, at the sale of Louisiana in 
spite of the express promise of Napoleon not 
to alienate it, lingered sullenly about New 
Orleans, and clung obstinately to Florida, 
which the administration had especially de- 
sired to gain. In the northeast, hatred of the 
Jeffersonian ideas, and discontent with his 
policy, were so rife that the air was full of 
threats of secession. The ties that held the 
Union together in those days were indeed 
weak ; that no severance came about was a 
marvel. 

On the 25th of June, 1805, says Mr. G. 
W. Cable, as evening came on, and the Cre- 
oles of New Orleans, according to their habit, 
gathered at the levee, they found their inter- 
188 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 



est excited by a handsome barge impelled by 
ten oarsmen, wbich, sweepiDg around the 
bend above the city, presently made a land- 
ing. Then stepped ashore a small but hand- 
some and distinguished figure, who as soon as 
he became known was received with all possi- 
ble respect. It was Aaron Burr, up to this 
time the most noteworthy public man who 
had appeared in New Or- 
leans since it passed into 
the new ownership. The 
grandson of Jonathan Ed- 
wards, he inherited re- 
markable abilities, which 
he had used to such advan- 
tage that he had attained 
everything but the highest 
place. He had failed by 
but one electoral vote of be- 
coming President instead 
of Jeiferson; but as Vice-President he was 
close at the front. His moral worth did not 
equal his political distinction. He had shown 
that he could be trusted by neither man nor 
woman ; he had killed in a duel Alexander 
Hamilton, perhaps the most useful man in the 
189 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 

country at the time ; and now in the ill-knit, 
unstable Union, not as yet well adjusted and 
in good working shape under the Constitution, 
he saw his selfish advantage in promoting 
treasonable schemes for breaking aj^art, rather 
than for bringing to pass harmony. What 
precisely Aaron Burr designed has never been 
known, probably was never distinctly out- 
lined in his own mind. He meant, no doubt, 
that events should determine how far he 
might go. Baffled in his ambition in the East, 
he resolved to make a trial in the West, hop- 
ing that through some dismemberment of the 
nation, and some robbery of Spain, Aaron 
Burr might sit exalted. He had won Blenner- 
hassett; Wilkinson had lent an ear to his 
propositions. Henry Clay and Andrew Jack- 
son, young men on the threshold each of a 
great career, the one in Tennessee, the other 
in Kentucky, had felt the spell of his fasci- 
nation, but recoiled at the suggestion of dis- 
loyalty. Claiborne, too, at New Orleans, 
though at first deferential to the eminent 
visitor, was utterly cold and unsympathetic 
before every suggestion of treason. New 
Orleans in general, on the contrary, was ex- 
190 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 

cellent soil for tlie seed Burr was scattering. 
The Creoles were full of grievances against 
the new order; the Americans, flatboat men 
and adventurers of the frontier, were born 
filibusters. In such a population the Union 
counted for little. But the story of Aaron 
Burr does not require from us more than a 
glance. Wilkinson betrayed him, as he did 
everybody. There were w^orthier instruments 
who wrought in the matter. Marshall sat in 
judgment on him ; his downfall was accom- 
plished. The Louisiana Purchase was saved 
from the plots of home conspirators. 

There was one last great peril from for- 
eign encroachment to be faced. France had 
vanished from the continent with the solemn 
and pathetic lowering of the tricolor that 
vdnter day in 1803. Spain, oppressed with 
the Napoleonic incubus, no longer needed to 
be reckoned with. But England remained. 
To keep Louisiana out of the grasp of Eng- 
land the First Consul had sold it. A time 
came Avhen the world-arbiter lano^uished in 
Elba; and straightway England, her hands 
for the moment free, clutched at the prize 
191 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

that had been withheld. The world then 
had rarely seen such an armament as she sent 
forth. Twenty thousand fighting-men were 
collected in a vast fleet ; nor was the quality 
of the expedition inferior. Long years of 
war against an enemy almost miraculously able 
had developed both on land and sea extraor- 
dinary leadership. Soldiers and sailors had 
been trained and toughened under Wellington 
and Nelson in the most critical campaigning. 
With the end of 1814 they were at the Mis- 
sissippi's mouth, and the odds were indeed 
against the forlorn Eepublic which for two 
years had been struggling on the northern 
frontier with very indifferent success against 
her formidable foe. So thought Sir Edward 
Pakenham, the commander, and those who 
sent him ; and the expedition brought, besides 
the fighters, civil ofiicials who, when the easy 
victory was gained, were to organize a broad 
British dependency on the Louisiana Purchase 
and the parts adjacent, which might attain 
who could predict what greatness ! 

Andrew Jackson, upon whom fell the 
duty to meet the attack, was the very type 
of imperious energy, a soul born for leader- 
192 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 

ship. Out of the heterogeneous elements at 
hand when he arrived in December, he had 
managed to combine an effective force that 
now performed a wonder. His line, says Mr. 
Cable,* was about half a mile long, an en- 
trenchment of the roughest at the best, and 
dwindling at the end into a mere double row 
of logs, two feet apart, and filled in between 
with earth. Here was an almost droll confu- 
sion of men, arms, and trappings. On the ex- 
treme right, at the river-bank, were some 
regular infantry and a company of Orleans 
rifles, with a few dragoons who served a 
howitzer. Next came a band of Louisiana 
Creoles in gay and varied uniforms ; then 
sailors with guns from a destroyed ship. A 
swarthy group of pirates from Barataria, 
serving two twenty-four pounders, had a po- 
sition near ; then a troop of negroes, another 
bunch of sailors, and a party of mulattoes 
from San Domingo. There was a stretch of 
blue marking the position of the Forty-fourth 
Infantry, next to whom an old artillery-man 
of Napoleon directed some Frenchmen in the 
management of a twelve-pounder. A long 

* Creoles of Louisiana, p. 195. 
13 193 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

line of brown homespun hunting - shirts 
draped the lank Tennesseeans of Carroll ; a 
bright cluster of marines ; more artillery ; 
then at the end Adair's Kentuckians and 
Coffee's Tennesseeans, frontiersmen all to 
whom the rifle was as another limb. There 
were on the main line but 3,200 men with 
12 cannon. How the waifs and strays of 
Jackson's line accomplished an achievement 
of the flrst rank is a brilliant page in our 
story. Since then no foreigner with hostile 
purpose has encroached upon the soil of the 
United States. 

The Louisiana Purchase having been ex- 
plored, and saved from peril at the hands of 
domestic plotters and outside enemies, the 
question of the exact boundaries, up to this 
time ever present and most vexatious, was 
gradually settled. "What are the eastern 
boundaries of Louisiana ? " said Livingston to 
Talleyrand in 1803, when the treaty was be- 
ing arranged. "I do not know," was the 
reply. " You must take it as we received it." 
" But what do you mean to take ? " asked Liv- 
ingston, thinking about the retrocession from 
194 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 

Spain. "I do not know," said Talleyrand. 
And so the question was left all uncertain. 
For two hundred and fifty years, in fact, 
Florida was a bone of contention, Spain, 
France, England, and at last the United 
States tugging at the morsel of tropical rich- 
ness. The phases of the contention since 
1803 it is not worth while to follow here; 
1819 is the year in which the long contro- 
versy was concluded, a treaty then being 
arranged with Spain which John Quincy 
Adams regarded as the most important trans- 
action in which he was ever concerned. By 
that treaty Florida was definitely ceded to 
the United States, which in return for the 
concession renounced all claim to the terri- 
tory west of the Mississippi as far as the 
Rio Grande. Spain is said to have congratu- 
lated herself on this arrangement : in return 
for a province isolated and impossible of 
defense against a most aggressive neighbor, 
she was set at rest as regards a region con- 
tiguous to Mexico, the secure holding of 
which was most important to her American 
empire. But unfortunate Spain could not be 
happy long; in a few years American ad- 
195 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

venturers who had fixed themselves in Texas, 
with small ceremony turned out the Spanish 
Government, and in 1844 Texas became part 
of the United States. In the mind of John 
Quincy Adams, the treaty of 1819 was per- 
haps more important for what it secured to 
the United States on the Pacific than for the 
acquisition of Florida. Spain yielded her claim 
to all territory north of the forty-second de- 
gree of latitude, the region comprised within 
Oregon and Washington. Resting upon this, 
upon, the discovery of the mouth of the Co- 
lumbia by Captain Gray in 1792, and upon 
the early establishment of Astoria, the United 
States could well afford to let go the vague 
title derived from the Louisiana Purchase. 
As the country grew, the ancient disputes 
were swallowed up and have long ceased to 
possess other than an historic interest. 

In the development of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase, two machines have played a great 
part. In the year 1815 two little craft made 
their way down-stream among the rafts and 
broadhorns, exciting some interest among 
the river-men, because in their movements 
196 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 

they were in a measure independent of oar, 
sail, or current — a mysteriously moving wheel, 
connected somehow^ with a furnace which 
smoked away from a tall funnel, being the 
principal agent of progress. Their cargoes 
delivered, the queer craft, to the great won- 
der of all, made their way back up-stream to 
the Ohio, whence they had descended. The 
application of the power of steam to locomo- 
tion thus proved successful, a demonstration 
the consequences of which it is scarcely pos- 
sible to exaggerate. As regards the New 
West, the civilization 
which has come to pass 
upon the area of the 
Louisiana Purchase, it 
is quite within bounds 
to say that it may look 
upon the locomotive as 
its creator. 

Deferring for the 
moment further consid- 
eration of this instru- 
mentality, another con- 
trivance must be mentioned — the notion of a 
Yankee's brain wrought out in wood and 
197 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 

iron, the results of which are even more re- 
markable than those of the steam-engine. 
Eli Whitney's cotton-gin, invented in 1793, 
produced a revolution economically, and 
much more ; it changed men's ways of look- 
ing at life, and set up new standards of right 
and wrong. Through the cotton-gin, sla- 
very, which had been a dying institution at 
the South as well as the North, became at 
once a profitable form of labor at the South. 
As cotton became king, to preserve slavery 
became at the South the first duty of the pa- 
triot. At the North, meantime, the moral 
sense of men became greatly roused against 
it, until to hold men in bondage was looked 
upon as the chief of sins. The "irreconcil- 
able conflict," therefore, came about the course 
and crisis of which has so affected the history 
of America. Our story can not be told with- 
out a reference to this. 

It was in the Louisiana Purchase that the 
conflict between North and South first be- 
came acute and threatening in the great 
struggle of 1819 and 1820 as to the condi- 
tions under which Missouri should be admit- 
ted to the Union. Louisiana had come in in 
198 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 

1812 ; the great territory nortli about tlie 
same time had received the name Missouri. 
From this, a little later, Arkansas had been 
set off as a territory; and in 1819 the re- 
gion north of 36° 30', having all the requi- 
sites for statehood, petitioned for admission 
to the Union. Let Missouri come in, said 
the country, but shall it come in as free 
or slave ? In the in- 
tense feeling which 
this question aroused, 
the people for the 
first time awoke to 
the seriousness of the 
rift that had been 
gradually opening. 

The Missouri Com- 1 
promise was the ac- 
commodation hit up- 
on at the moment, 
in arranging which 
Henry Clay came for- 
ward into fame as the 
" great pacificator." 
Slavery being admitted into Missouri, it was 
ordained by Congress that the region north 
199 




History of The Louisiana Purchase 



of Missouri should be forever free. The coun- 
try settled upon this, feeling that the union of 
the States was thereby saved ; for a genera- 
tion, from 1820 to 1854, the act was held as 
binding, and peace prevailed. Meantime the 
country was filling up. Missouri became pop- 
ulous ; Iowa, also on the Purchase, followed 
her into statehood in 1845 ; and it began to 
be plain that the region still farther west and 
north, instead of remaining unoccupied for 
ages to come, as the con- 
temporaries of Jefferson 
had imagined, was to re- 
ceive immediately a nu- 
merous immigration. 

Then broke upon the 
land the voice of Stephen 
A. Douglas, proclaiming 
in the Federal Senate the 
doctrine of " Squatter sov- 
ereignty," denouncing the 
Missouri Compromise as 
unconstitutional, and de- 
claring that not Congress, but the settlers 
within a territory alone had power to decide 
whether the territory should be slave or free. 
200 




what a Century Has Brought Forth 

At once the doctrine was embodied in the 
Nebraska Bill (the whole vast expanse west 
of Iowa and north of Missouri being known 
as Nebraska), which presently became the 
law of the land. Kansas, being set off, forth- 
with became the scene of troubles which 
could end only in war. 

Though in the tumults preceding the 
civil war the Louisiana Purchase w^as to 
such an extent the theater of important de- 
velopments, it lost that gloomy distinction as 
soon as the cannon began fairly to thunder. 
The good conduct of Frank Blair and Na- 
thaniel Lyon early made Missouri secure for 
the Union ; there were battles elsewhere in the 
Purchase, indeed, but none really momentous. 
As compared with what went forward east 
of the river, the conflicts were not significant. 
Those sad four years lapsed slowly on, so 
burdened with anxiety, with pain, with death. 
Dark indeed was the catastrophe to which 
the Yankee inventor of 1793 had brought us ! 
But the Union was saved, to the immense 
advantage, as we believe, of the country and 
of mankind. The Louisiana Purchase, though 
less blood-bedewed in the conflict than other 
201 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

areas farther east, has reaped in full measure 
the benefits of the victory. 

Recurring to the power of steam, as ap- 
plied to locomotion, the steamboat has been 
succeeded, to a large extent superseded, by 
the locomotive; and the great New West, 
which the world beholds as having come to 
pass in the expanse so cavalierly tossed to us 
by Napoleon in 1803, may rightly be called 
the child of the locomotive. Never before, 
when men have occupied new lands, has the 
occupation been so rapid. At the present 
moment not a fragment, save Oklahoma and 
the Indian Territory, remains which has not 
been admitted into statehood. Twelve com- 
monwealths, populous, politically complete, 
socially organized according to advanced 
standards of civilization, stand side by side. 
Following Louisiana and Missouri, Arkansas 
became a State in 1835, Iowa in 1845, Min- 
nesota in 1858, Kansas in 1861, Nebraska in 
1867, Colorado in 1876, North Dakota, South 
Dakota, and Montana in 1889, and Wyoming 
in 1890. It is not strange that some feel 
we have gone quite too rapidly, and that 
202 



what a Century Has Brought Forth 

our grandchildren may wisli their forebears 
had been slower in the exploitation of the 
resources of our noble domain. It does not 
belong to the function of him who writes the 
story of the Louisiana Purchase to discuss 
this question, or to deal with the other prob- 
lems which beset and threaten at the present 
moment. The purpose of this book has been 
merely to give the story of the transaction 
through which the area came to us, not to 
narrate the events which make up its sub- 
sequent history. At that history we have 
done no more than to cast a glance. The 
result is remarkable. The value of the agri- 
cultural products alone of the area, for one 
year, is a hundred times the purchase-money. 
The taxable wealth is more than four hun- 
dred times the purchase-money. Kecent sta- 
tistics may be tabulated as shown on the fol- 
lowing page.* 

The Louisiana Purchase is a domain with 
natural resources almost unparalleled. It is 
occupied by 15,000,000 English-speaking peo- 
ple — a race formed by the assimilation into 
a strong Anglo-Saxon stock of elements from 
a number of the better breeds of men. The 
203 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

appliances of tlie highest civilization are scat- 
tered among them lavishly. The principles 
of the noblest polity ever evolved in the 
progress of the human race are established 
for its government. The present fruition is 
scarcely calculable ; the hope for the future is 
boundless. 

* Population, Area in Square Miles, and Taxable 
Wealth of the States and Territories embraced 
by the Boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase 



States and 
Territories. 


Population. 


Area, 
Square miles. 


Taxable wealth. 


Arkansas 


1,311,564 

539,700 

2,231,853 

1,470,495 

1,381,625 

1,751,394 

3,106,665 

243,329 

1,068,539 

319,040 

401,570 

92,531 

391,960 

398,245 


53,850 
103,925 
56,025 
82,080 
48,720 
83,365 
69,415 
146,080 
77,510 
70,795 
77,650 
97,890 
31.400 
39,030 


$189,999,050 


Colorado 

Iowa 


430.000,000 
2,106.615,620 


Kansas 


1,021,833,294 


Louisiana 


267,723,138 


Minnesota 


585,083,328 


Missouri 

Montana 


1,093,091,264 
153,441,154 


Nebraska 

North Dakota 

South Dakota 

Wyoming 


171.747.593 

143,000,000 

172.225,085 

37.892,303 


Indian Territory . . 
Oklahoma 


94.000.000 
150,000,000 






Totals 


14,703,510 


1,037,735 


$6,616,642,829 



The taxable wealth above given is approximate only, be- 
cause of variations in the systems of assessments, and is in 
most instances much below actual values. 



204 



APPENDIX A 



[Memoir of Livingston, addressed to Talleyrand, Min- 
ister of Foreign Affairs, about February 1, 1803, one of the 
papers undoubtedly read by the First Consul, and which 
may have influenced his determination in the matter of the 
sale of Louisiana.*] 

I AM sensible, sir, that I have already taxed your patience 
in the memoirs that I have submitted to your attention ; but, 
sir, (pardon the frankness with which I speak,) the critical 
moment is arrived which rivets the connexion of the United 
States to France, or binds a young and growing people for 
ages hereafter to her mortal and inveterate enemy. 

How highly I estimate the alliance of France, and how 
much I believe the happiness of both nations may be pro- 
moted by it, not only appears from the whole of my political 
conduct, but has been stated in an essay upon the relative 
maritime power of France and Britain, which, as I have 
learned, has been honored by the First Consul's attention. 

The United States have at present but two possible 
causes of difference with France — the debt due to her citi- 
zens, and the possession of Louisiana. The first of these 
France is not only bound to pay by the laws of justice, but 
by the solemn stipulations of a treaty which has been ob- 
served with the utmost good faith by the United States, 

* Annals of Congress, 1802-1803, pp. 1078-1083. 
205 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

who have advanced large sums in consequence, without suf- 
fering themselves to doubt that it would meet with equal 
attention on the part of France. Give me leave to add, sir, 
that your signature was considered as a guarantee of that 
treaty by the people of the United States, who had long 
since learned to estimate the candor and integrity of your 
character. 

My present object, sir, is to show, in a very few words, 
that Louisiana affords France not only the means of dis- 
charging their debt, and promoting the other object which 
I took the liberty to hint at before, but even of placing her 
colony of Louisiana in a better situation, should it be her 
wish to retain that colony, than she would do by listening 
to no compromise with the United States. 

The object of France in forming this colony is to supply 
her islands ; to afford an outlet for such of her population 
as she thinks she can spare from home. But not to scatter 
her people over an immense wilderness, where they will be 
lost for her and to the world ; or to fill her territory with 
inhabitants that would withdraw their allegiance the mo- 
ment they found themselves in a situation so to do ; which 
will certainly be the case if these, or if any but the natives 
of France are permitted to settle it. 

It is, then, the interest of France to limit her territory, 
and to render it as compact as possible, without placing it 
at such a distance from the sea as to put it totally out of her 
control. While, with the remainder of the territory, she 
fulfils other important objects, and, above all, builds her 
future connexion with the United States upon mutual in- 
terests, and that strict and solemn regard for treaties which 
can alone lull the apprehensions that her power excites, and 
to which, more than to the force of her arms, Rome was in- 
debted for the dominion of the world. 

The produce of Louisiana must be conveyed by the Mis- 
sissippi, and there are no ports for her marine to the west of 
206 



Appendix A 



Pensacola. If, therefore, France should possess Pensacola, 
and all the ports to the east of it, she will have the complete 
command of the Gulf. And if she possesses the free naviga- 
tion of the Mississippi, and all Louisiana lying to the west 
of that river, and south of the river Arkansas, comprehending 
a tract nearly as large as the ancient Government of France, 
she will have more territory than will suflBce to supply all 
the wants of her marine, and West India colonies, with such 
articles as that country can produce. 

Louisiana, within these limits, can support a population 
of fifteen millions of people. You will judge, sir, whether 
it would be possible for France to retain more than that 
number in subjection ; or whether it would be good policy 
to extend her population beyond the number she can govern. 

The settlers to the north of the river Arkansas would be 
too far from the sea to fear any force from France. A dis- 
tant colony must be of moderate size, compactly settled, and 
not remote from the sea, or the parent State will soon lose 
all control over it. The interest of France, then, requires 
that her colony in Louisiana should not exceed the limits I 
mention, and the separation of this territory from that lying 
to the east of the river Perdido would afford an additional 
security to France for the possession of both, not only as it 
would break the connexion of the colonies, but as their in- 
terest would be totally different, the last possessing little 
valuable land, (for both East and West Florida are barren 
tracts,) would be military posts and commercial entrepots^ 
from which the trade would be carried on to and from the 
Mississippi in small vessels; while that with France would, 
on account of her safe and commodious harbors, centre in 
East Florida. 

The inhabitants of this country would be deeply in- 
terested in a continuance of their connexion with the mother 
country. While the interposition of West Florida, in the 
hands of the United States, would prevent any coercion ou 
207 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

the part of the inhabitants of Louisiana, if they should at 
any time be disposed to revolt; East Florida, on the con- 
trary, while loyal to France, would, by means of her navy, 
have a powerful control on the colony of Louisiana. 

The example of England should have some weight. The 
Dutch possessed New York ; England, for the sake of uniting 
her colonies, purchased it from Holland. Had it been left 
in the hands of the Dutch, that union, which has lost the 
whole to Britain, would have been prevented. 

The Colonies of Louisiana and East Florida, within the 
limits proposed, being thus secured, the remainder of the 
Spanish cession is only valuable as it enables France to pur- 
sue other great objects, to wit : the payment of the debt in 
conformity to her treaty;* and the conciliation of an ally 
which may on so many important occasions be useful to her; 
and the one of no less magnitude to which I have in my last 
the honor to allude. 

The United States possess the east side of the Mississippi, 
from its source to the thirty-first degree of north latitude. 
It would be very interesting to them to acquire the posses- 
sion of the remainder of the east bank of that river to its 
mouth, and that narrow strip of land which lies between the 
thirty first degree of latitude and the sea, as far as the river 
Perdido ; not on account of the value of the land, for, ex- 
cept a small quantity on the banks of the river, it is for the 
most part a sandy barren, or a sunken marsh ; but because 
it would give them the mouths of those rivers which run 
through their territory, and afford an outlet to the sea. 

To the cession of this country but one possible objection 
can be raised on the part of France ; it may attach a value 
to New Orleans which it by no means merits. The fact is, 
that to France, who has the choice of fixing her capital on 
either side of the river, New Orleans has no circumstance to 

* The reference is to the Spoliation Claims. 

208 



Appendix A 



recommend it. It is placed on the naked bank ; it has no 
port, basin, or quay, for shipping; has no fortification of 
any strength; and is incapable of being rendered a good 
military position; and the houses are only of wood, subject 
to continual accidents. The situation was fixed first by 
France on account of its being on the Florida side of the 
river where the settlements commenced ; but as it was soon 
found that the lands of the w^est side of the river were much 
richer, the principal part of the population is now there. 
The bank opposite to New Orleans is higher and better cal- 
culated for a town: it already has a strong post in Fort 
Leon, the most commanding position in that country; and 
the harbor, or rather the road, is in all things equal to that 
of New Orleans. As a Government house and barracks, 
stores, &c., must be built either at New Orleans or at 
Fort Leon, there can be no doubt, even if France retains 
both, that the latter ought to have the preference, since 
a regular and handsome capital could be laid out there, 
and in a healthier and stronger situation than at New 
Orleans. 

It is highly probable that, in this case, the superiority it 
would have in point of health, the advantages of the Gov- 
ernment, and, above all, the free trade with France and her 
islands, would render it in three years more populous than 
New Orleans now is. The French merchants would sell 
their houses in the one to the Americans, and establish them- 
selves in the other. Should France retain the whole of the 
Spanish cession on both sides of the river, she will find it 
absolutely necessary to remove her capital to the west side. 
The river for three months is impassable from the violence 
of the inundation, and the trees that it brings down with it. 
As the bulk of the colony is on the west side of the river, it 
must necessarily draw its capital after it, or submit to be cut 
off from it during this period. A town will, therefore, rise 
at Fort Leon, where the richest establishments are already 
H 209 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

formed, which must increase with the population of the 
country. 

The difficulty of removing the capital from New Orleans 
will increase as its buildings become more numerous, and its 
population greater. It is, therefore, in every event the true 
interest of France to commence the establishment of a capi- 
tal on a regular plan on the west side of the river, where it 
must ultimately be, rather than expend money upon the old 
town of New Orleans, which they will find too much in- 
sulated for the capital of Louisiana. 

Permit me, sir, to examine the subject in a point of view 
which I conceive is important not only to France and the 
United States, but to every maritime Power. It cannot be 
doubted that the peace between France and Britain has been 
too disadvantageous to the latter to be of long duration. 
Strong symptoms of an approaching rupture have already 
appeared ; and the statesmen of both countries will begin to 
examine the points of attack and defence, and the acquisi- 
tions that afford the most permanent advantages. The Cape, 
Malta, and Egypt, have already awakened the cupidity of 
Great Britain. Should she extend her views across the 
Atlantic, (and what is to limit them ?) the cession of Louisiana 
to France offers her the fairest pretence to invade that coun- 
try, either from Canada or by the Atlantic. 

She felt no reluctance in leaving them to Spain ; but she 
will not quietly see them in the hands of France. She will 
strain every nerve to acquire them. By uniting them with 
Canada and Nova Scotia she encircles the United States; 
and, having the same manners, the same religion, the same 
language, and a number of partisans among the commercial 
inhabitants of the United States ; having carefully removed 
every conflicting question, and even conciliated, by the lib- 
erality of her restitutions, those whom her conduct during 
the war had irritated ; it will be difficult to say what will be 
the extent of her influence. But, independently of this cir- 
210 



Appendix A 



cumstance, if Britain should unite Louisiana and West Flor- 
ida to her other American possessions, no power in Europe 
will be able to oppose her force. The bay of St. Esprit will 
become another Gibraltar, from which she will ravage every 
island and continental possession of France, Spain, and Hol- 
land ; she will monopolize the commodities of the West as 
she has already done those of the East Indies. Not a 
moment, sir, should be lost for placing a barrier between 
the settlements that France may wish to retain in Louisiana 
and Canada, by ceding to the United States the portion I 
have proposed above the Arkansas ; and by the cession of 
New Orleans and West Florida, to take from them the first 
inducement to attack that country. France should exert all 
her resources and all her strength in the immediate fortifica- 
tion of Pensacola and the bay of St. Esprit ; or, if she has 
not the means of doing it, she should leave them in the 
hands of Spain (if she can consent to leave her at peace) or 
to some other neutral nation. For I will venture to say that 
the acquisition of that country, by a nation who possesses 
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Canada, with a powerful 
maritime force, will annihilate the external trade of every 
other nation in Europe ; and that it would be the true in- 
terest even of Spain herself, rather to see her ports in Florida 
in the hands of the United States, who alone can defend 
them, than to keep them in her own, at the risk of having 
them wrested from her by Britain. Perhaps, in the present 
state of things, considering the superiority of the British 
Navy at this moment, the great capital that it will require 
to reinstate the French islands, and her continental posses- 
sions in the East Indies and in America, the wisest measure 
would be, not only to make the cession I have asked, but 
to hypothecate the whole of East Florida for a term of 
years, for such part of the American debt as may remain 
unsatisfied. 

But as this is a mere hasty, undigested idea, rather in- 
211 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

tended to turn your attention to this subject, than as matter 
sufficiently matured to take the form of a proposition, I 
cannot, sir, conclude this note, without turning your atten- 
tion to the present feelings of the people of all parties in the 
United States with respect to France. The total silence of 
the French Government on the subject of their intention as 
to the navigation of the Mississippi, and their rights of e?i- 
trepot at New Orleans, secured to them by the most solemn 
treaty with Spain ; the mystery with which all the arrange- 
ments of France for taking possession of that country are 
concealed from the Minister of the United States, notwith- 
standing his repeated notes to the Minister of Exterior Re- 
lations on the subject ; have excited the most lively appre- 
hensions of designs unfriendly to their commerce and their 
rights. The total neglect of every measure that leads to a 
security for their debt, notwithstanding the provisions of 
the treaty, and the ruin of numbers of their citizens by this ; 
and the very extraordinary decisions which have, in several 
instances, taken place in the Council of Prizes, for which I 
have been able to receive not merely no redress but even no 
answer ; contrasted with the good faith, displayed by their 
own Government with respect to France, with the scrupu- 
lous attention that Great Britain has paid to repair, by the 
most liberal conduct, the abuses she has permitted herself to 
commit during the war, leads to a belief that France limits 
her rights by her power; and insensibly disposes them to 
alliances, both offensive and defensive, which it has hereto- 
fore been her policy to avoid. Can it possibly be the inter- 
est of France, sir, to drive the United States into these alli- 
ances, while she forms colonies, and retains islands in their 
neighborhood ? Can she look with contempt upon an enter- 
prising and hardy nation who possesses means of defence at 
home, and for a maritime force which will render her re- 
spectable abroad ? The immense power of France has ren- 
dered her an object of jealousy to the Old World ; while the 
212 



Appendix A 



inhabitants of the New felt no other sensations than those 
of admiration and respect. 

In Europe, France only knows secret enemies and hollow 
friends. In America, she has grateful allies. Let her not, 
sir, for the bubble of the day, cast them off; but let her 
avail herself of the advantages she has acquired, to bind 
them to her. Should she, relying on her own strength, 
never need their aid, she still will find a consolation in re- 
flecting that the sacrifices (if such they may be called) she 
makes, are sacrifices at the altar of justice and national faith. 
She will cheaply purchase the esteem of men and the favor 
of Heaven by the surrender of a distant wilderness, which 
can neither add to her wealth nor to her strength. 

R. R. L. 



213 



APPENDIX B 

NAPOLEON'S OKDER FOR THE SALE OF LOUISIANA 

TRANSLATION * 

Paris, 3 Floreal, an 11 (April 23d, 1803). 
Minute for a Secret Agreement with the United States of 
America 

The First Consul of the French Republic, in the name 
of the French people, and the President of the United States 
of America, desiring to prevent all possible misund(3rstanding 
relating to the topics mentioned in Articles II and V of the 
Agreement of the 8th Vendemiaire, year 9 (October 1st, 
1802), and wishing to promote as far as possible the close 
and friendly relations which at the time of the said Agree- 
ment were fortunately established between the two states, 
have named as Ministers Plenipotentiary Citizen Barbe Mar- 
bois, Minister of the Public Treasury [the American names 
are omitted], who, after having exchanged their credentials, 
have agreed on the following articles: 

Art. 1. The French Republic yields and transmits to 
the United States of America all the rights which it has ac- 
quired over Louisiana through the treaty made with His 
Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain, the 8th Vendemiaire, 
year 9 of the French Republic; and in consequence of 
said cession, Louisiana, its territory, and the dependencies 

* Correspondance de Napoleon Premier, J. Dumaine, Paris, 
1861. Henri Plon, editeur, tome viii, pp. 289, etc. 
214 



Appendix B 



appertaining thereto, shall become part of the American 
Union, and shall constitute in due course one or several 
States according to the terms of the Constitution of the 
United States. 

Art. 2. The United States undertake to favor in a spe- 
cial way the commerce and navigation of French citizens 
and of the subjects of His Catholic Majesty, in the towns, 
harbors, roads, seas, rivers, etc., of Louisiana, and to espe- 
cially secure to them by a privilege not in future to be 
granted to any other nation, the perpetual right of deposit 
and navigation which was conceded to the Americans by the 
Treaty of October 27th, 1795, between Spain and the United 
States. 

Moreover, it is agreed that in the ports and towns of 
Louisiana, French and Spanish commerce shall enjoy perfect 
freedom to import goods. French and Spanish vessels and 
merchandise shall never be subjected to any of the customs 
or dues which may be imposed upon the commerce of other 
nations. They shall, in the ports of Louisiana, be treated 
in all respects like French-American merchandise coming 
from some other American port. 

Art. 3. Three other places of commercial deposit shall 
be accorded to France and Spain, on the right bank of the 
Mississippi, toward the mouth of the Red River and the 
mouths of the Arkansas and Missouri, and two points on 
the left bank of the Illinois River and toward the mouth 
of the Ohio. French merchants shall enjoy in these places 
all the advantages accorded to Americans by the King 
of Spain, on the 27th of October, 1795. It is also agreed 
that France may appoint in these places, as well as at New 
Orleans, commercial agents, who, according to Article X of 
the Agreement of the 8th Vendemiaire, year 9, shall enjoy 
the usual rights and prerogatives of such officials. 

Art. 4. It is agreed that the obligations assumed by the 
Government of the French Republic as respects the debt due 
.215 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

to American citizens, specified in Article V of the Agreement 
of the 8th Vend6miaire, shall be held to be cancelled, and 
that the obligation shall be regarded as transferred by the 
present treaty, to the Government of the United States, 
which undertakes to satisfy every claim which has been or 
may be addressed on that score to the Government of the 
Republic — it being well understood that the obligations 
contracted toward French citizens by the Government of the 
United States, by virtue of the said article, remain un- 
touched, as well as the rights of French citizens to the pay- 
ment of debts due them. 

Art. 5. Aside from the satisfaction of the claims speci- 
fied in the preceding article, the Government of the United 
States agrees to pay to France the sum of one hundred mil- 
lion francs, in twelve equal instalments, the term for each 
instalment to be twelve months, and the payment of the 
first instalment to be made a month after the present date. 

The present convention shall be ratified in good and due 
form, and the ratifications shall be exchanged within six 
months of the date of the signatures of the Ministers Pleni- 
potentiary, or sooner if it is possible. 

By order of the First Consul. 
Archives de Finance. 



216 



appe:^dix c 

Treaty of Purchase letween the United States and the French 
Republic * 

The President of the United States of America, and the 
First Consul of the French Republic, in the name of the 
French people, desiring to remove all sources of misunder- 
standing relative to objects of discussion mentioned in the 
second and fifth articles of the Convention of (the 8th Vend6- 
miaire, an 9,) September 30, 1800, relative to the rights 
claimed by the United States, in virtue of the Treaty con- 
cluded at Madrid, the 27th October, 1795, between His 
Catholic Majesty and the said United States, and vyrilling to 
strengthen the union and friendship, which at the time of 
the said Convention was happily re-established between the 
two nations, have respectively named their Plenipotentiaries, 
to wit : The President of the United States of America, by 
and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the said 
States, Robert R. Livingston, Minister Plenipotentiary of the 
United States, and James Monroe, Minister Plenipotentiary 
and Envoy Extraordinary of the said States, near the Gov- 
ernment of the French Republic ; and the First Consul, in 
the name of the French people, the French citizen Barb6 
Marbois, Minister of the Public Treasury, who, after having 
respectively exchanged their full powers, have agreed to the 
following articles : 

* Annals of Congress, 1802-1803, pp. 1006-1008. 
217 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

Art. 1. Whereas, by the article the third of the Treaty 
concluded at St. Ildefonso, (the 9th Vend^miaire, an 9,) Oc- 
tober 1, 1800, between the First Consul of the French Re- 
public and His Catholic Majesty, it was agreed as follows : 
His Catholic Majesty promises and engages on his part to 
cede to the French Republic, six months after the full and 
entire execution of the conditions and stipulations herein, 
relative to his Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the Col- 
ony or Province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it 
now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France 
possessed it ; and such as it should be after the treaties sub- 
sequently entered into between Spain and other States : And 
whereas, in pursuance of the Treaty, particularly of the third 
article, the French Republic has an incontestable title to the 
domain and to the possession of the said territory, the First 
Consul of the French Republic, desiring to give to the United 
States a strong proof of friendship, doth hereby cede to the 
said United States, in the name of the French Republic, for 
ever and in full sovereignty, the said territory, with all its 
rights and appurtenances, as fully and in the same manner 
as they might have been acquired by the French Republic, 
in value of the above-mentioned treaty, concluded with His 
Catholic Majesty. 

Art. 2. In the cession made by the preceding article, 
are included the adjacent islands belonging to Louisiana, all 
public lots and squares, vacant lands, and all public build, 
ings, fortifications, barracks, and other edifices, which are 
not private property. The archives, papers, and documents, 
relative to the domain and sovereignty of Louisiana and its 
dependencies, will be left in the possession of the Commis- 
saries of the United States, and copies will be afterwards 
given in due form to the magistrates and municipal officers, 
of such of the said papers and documents as may be neces- 
sary to them. 

Art. 3.. The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be 
218 



Appendix C 



incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted 
as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal 
Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, 
and immunities, of citizens of the United States ; and, in the 
mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the 
free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion 
which they profess. 

Art. 4, There shall be sent by the Government of France 
a Commissary to Louisiana, to the end that he do every act 
necessary, as well to receive from the officers of His Catholic 
Majesty the said country and its dependencies in the name 
of the French Republic, if it has not been already done, as 
to transmit it, in the name of the French Republic, to the 
Commissary or agent of the United States. 

Art. 5. Immediately after the ratification of the present 
treaty by the President of the United States, and in case 
that of the First Consul shall have been previously obtained, 
the Commissary of the French Republic shall remit all the 
military posts of New Orleans, and other parts of the ceded 
territory, to the Commissary or Commissaries named by the 
President to take possession ; the troops, whether of France 
or Spain, who may be there, shall cease to occupy any mil- 
itary post from the time of taking possession, and shall be 
embarked as soon as possible in the course of three months 
after the ratification of this treaty. 

Art. 6. The United States promise to execute such 
treaties and articles as may have been agreed between Spain 
and the tribes and nations of Indians, until, by mutual con- 
sent of the United States and the said tribes or nations, other 
suitable articles shall have been agreed upon. 

Art, 7. As it is reciprocally advantageous to the com- 
merce of France and the United States, to encourage the 
communication of both nations, for a limited time, in the 
country ceded by the present treaty, until general arrange- 
ments relative to the commerce of both nationsmay be agreed 
219 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

on, it has been agreed between the contracting parties, that 
the French ships coming directly from France or any of her 
Colonies, loaded only with the produce or manufactures of 
France or her said Colonies, and the ships of Spain coming 
directly from Spain or any of her Colonies, loaded only with 
the produce or manufactures of Spain or her Colonies, shall 
be admitted during the space of twelve years in the port of 
New Orleans, and in all other legal ports of entry within the 
ceded territory, in the same manner as the ships of the United 
States coming directly from France or Spain, or any of their 
Colonies, without being subject to any other or greater duty 
on the merchandise, or other or greater tonnage than those 
paid by the citizens of the United States. 

During the space of time above-mentioned, no other na- 
tion shall have a right to the same privileges in the ports of 
the ceded territory. The twelve years shall commence three 
months after the exchange of ratifications, if it shall take 
place in France, or three months after it shall have been 
notified at Paris to the French Government, if it shall take 
place in the United States ; it is, however, well understood, 
that the object of the above article is to favor the manufac- 
tures, commerce, freight, and navigation of France and 
Spain, so far as relates to the importations that the French 
and Spanish shall make into the said ports of the United 
States, without in any sort affecting the regulations that the 
United States may make concerning the exportation of the 
produce and merchandise of the United States, or any right 
they may have to make such regulations. 

Akt. 8. In future and forever, after the expiration of the 
twelve years, the ships of France shall be treated upon the 
footing of the most favored nations in the ports above-men- 
tioned. 

Art. 9. The particular convention signed this day by 
the respective Ministers, having for its object to provide the 
payment of debts due to the citizens of the United States by 
220 



Appendix C 



the French Republic, prior to the 30th of September, 1800, 
(8th Vendemiaire, an 9,) is approved, and to have its execu- 
tion in the same manner as if it had been inserted in the 
present treaty ; and it shall be ratified in the same form and 
in the same time, so that the one shall not be ratified distinct 
from the other. Another particular convention, signed at 
the same d^te as the present treaty, relative to a definitive 
rule between the contracting parties is, in the like manner, 
approved, and will be ratified in the same form and in the 
same time, and jointly. 

Art. 10. The present treaty shall be ratified in good and 
due form, and the ratification shall be exchanged in the 
space of six months after the date of the signature by the 
Ministers Plenipotentiary, or sooner if possible. 

In faith whereof, the respective Plenipotentiaries have 
signed these articles in the French and English languages, 
declaring, nevertheless, that the present treaty was originally 
agreed to in the French language, and have thereunto put 
their seals. 

Done at Paris, the 10th day of Floreal, in the 11th year 
of the French Republic, and the 30th April, 1803. 

R. R. Livingston, 
James Monroe, 
Barb6 Marbois. 



A Convention between the United States of America and the 
French Republic 

The President of the United States of America, and the 
First Consul of the French Republic, in the name of the 
French people, in consequence of the Treaty of Cession of 
Louisiana, which has been signed this day, wishing to regu- 
late definitively everything which has relation to the said 
cession, have authorized, to this effect, the Plenipotenti- 
221 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 

aries, that is to say : the President of the United States has, 
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the said 
States, nominated for their Plenipotentiaries, Robert R. Liv- 
ingston, Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States, and 
James Monroe, Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extra- 
ordinary of the said United States, near the Government of 
the French Republic ; and the First Consul of the French 
Republic, in the name of the French people, has named, as 
Plenipotentiary of the said Republic, the French citizen 
Barbe Marbois, who, in virtue of their full powers, which 
have been exchanged this day, have agreed to the following 
articles : 

Akt. 1. The Government of the United States engages 
to pay to the French Government, in the manner specified 
in the following articles, the sum of sixty millions of francs, 
independent of the sum which shall be fixed by any other 
convention for the payment of the debts due by France to 
citizens of the United States. 

Art. 3. For the payment of the sum of sixty millions of 
francs, mentioned in the preceding article, the United States 
shall create a stock of eleven million two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars, bearing an interest of six per cent, per 
annum, payable half-yearly, in London, Amsterdam, or 
Paris, amounting, by the half-year to three hundred and 
thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars, according to the 
proportions which shall be determined by the French Gov- 
ernment, to be paid at either place : the principal of the said 
stock to be reimbursed at the Treasury of the United States, 
in annual payments of not less than three millions of dollars 
each ; of which the first payment shall commence fifteen 
years after the date of the exchange of ratifications: this 
stock shall be transferred to the Government of France, or 
to such person or persons as shall be authorized to receive it, 
in three months, at most, after the exchange of the ratifica- 
tions of this treaty, and after Louisiana shall be taken pos- 
222 



Appendix C 

session of in the name of the Government of the United 
States. 

It is further agreed that, if the French Government 
should be desirous of disposing of the said stock, to receive 
the capital in Europe at shorter terms, that its measures, for 
that purpose, shall be taken so as to favor, in the greatest 
degree possible, the credit of the United States, and to raise 
to the highest price the said stock. 

Art. 3. It is agreed that the dollar of the United States, 
specified in the present convention, shall be fixed at five 
francs 3333-lOOOOths or five livres eight sous tournoise. 

The present convention shall be ratified in good and true 
form, and the ratifications shall be exchanged in the space 
of six months, to date from this day, or sooner if possible. 

In faith of which, the respective Plenipotentiaries have 
signed the above articles, both in the French and English 
languages, declaring, nevertheless, that the present treaty 
has been originally agreed on and written in the French lan- 
guage, to which they have hereunto affixed their seals. 

Done at Paris, the tenth day of Floreal, eleventh year of 
the French Republic, (30th April, 1803.) 

Robert R. Livingston, 
James Monroe, 
Barb6 Marbois. 



223 



INDEX 



Adams, Henry, on Spain's help- 
lessness, 25; on Carlos IV and 
Godoy, 33, etc. ; on Jefferson, 
56 ; on debt of the United States 
to the Haitians, 72. 

Adams, John Quincy, and the ac- 
quisition of Florida, 195. 

Arkansas, admitted as a State, 
202. 

Barbe-Marbois, his career, 130; 
his History of Louisiana, 131 : 
describes the sale, 132 ; arranges 
with the American envoys and 
signs the treaty, 137, etc. 

Bernadotte, to command in Louisi- 
ana, 52 ; to be envoy to Wash- 
ington, 53. 

Berthier, his treaty of San Hde- 
fonso, 36. 

Bienville, founds New Orleans, 13. 

Binger, Hermann, on dimensions 
of the Louisiana Purchase, 183. 

Bonaparte, see Joseph, Lucien, Na- 
poleon. 

Bourrienne, Lucien Bonaparte's 
opinion of, 98. 

Braddock's defeat, 18. 

Burr, Aaron, his character and 
conspiracy, 189, 190. 

Bussy, in India, 6. 



Cabildo, city council in New Or- 
leans, 43 ; place of meeting of 
city council at New Orleans, the 
scene of the cession of Louisiana 
to the United States, 164. 

Cable, G. W., describes Burr's ar- 
rival at New Orleans, 189; 
Jackson's line, January 8, 1815, 
193. 

Carlos IV, King of Spain, his 
character and court, 33, 34. 

Carnot, tries to recover Louisiana, 
26. 

Carondelet, Spanish governor of 
Louisiana, 24. 

Champlain, Samuel, his early ca- 
reer, 4, 7 ; at Quebec, 8 ; neg- 
lected by king and nation, 9. 

Civil war, in the Louisiana Pur- 
chase, 201. 

Claiborne, U. S. Commissioner to 
receive Louisiana, 169, etc. ; gov- 
ernor of Louisiana, 173. 

Clark, William, companion of 
Lewis in exploration, 186. 

Clay, Henry, and Missouri Com- 
promise, 199. 

Colorado, admitted as a State, 202. 

Constitution, new ways of inter- 
preting since 1803, 2, 160. 

Cotton-gin, its vast effect, 198. 



15 



225 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 



D'Abadie, surrenders New Or- 
leans to Spain, 22. 

Decres, Minister of Marine, op- 
poses the sale of Louisiana, 134. 

Democrats, see Republicans. 

Douglas, Stephen A., and the Ne- 
braska Bill, 200. 

D'Ulloa, Spanish governor of 
Louisiana, 23. 

Dupleix, his career in India, 6. 

East Indies, French colonization 
in, 6. 

England, at peace with France, 
45 ; Napoleon's outbreak against, 
in 1803, 70 ; as possible pos- 
sessor of Louisiana, 146; at- 
tempt of January 8, 1815, 192. 

English colonists, their lack of 
imagination, 8 ; their final tri- 
umph over the French, 20. 

Etruria, kingdom, given to Spain 
for Louisiana, 54. 



Faubourg Sainte Marie at New 
Orleans, 165. 

Federalists, rejoice in Jefferson's 
embarrassments, 02; denounce 
and ridicule Louisiana Purchase, 
148, etc. 

Filles a la cassette^ wives for the 
colonists, 15. 

Florida held on to by Spain, 37 ; 
ceded to the United States, 195. 

France, colonization necessary to, 
her early activity, 3, 4 ; faults of 
her colonial policy, 5 ; her meth- 
od of settling Louisiana, 13 ; be- 
comes active in America in 
eighteenth century. 17 ; utter 
failure in West and East, 20; 

226 



assists Thirteen Colonies to In- 
dependence, 22 ; desires to re- 
cover Louisiana, 26 ; ceremonies 
at surrender of Louisiana to the 
United States, 161, etc. ; her flag 
lowered forever in America, 172; 
probability of reoccupation by 
her if the civil war had ended 
in disunion, 178. 

Galvez, Spanish governor of 
Louisiana, a good soldier, 24. 

Gayarre, on Spain in Louisiana, 
22, etc. 

Gayoso, Spanish governor of 
Louisiana, 24. 

Godoy, Prince of Peace, 34; makes 
favorable treaty with United 
States, 35 ; foils Napoleon with 
great dexterity, 39. 

Griswold, Gaynor, Federalist lead- 
er in 1803, 149, 154. 



Haitians, debt to, of the United 
States, 71. 



Iberville, at the mouth of the Mis- 
sissippi, 12, 13. 
Iowa, admitted as a State, 202. 

Jackson, Andrew, at New Orleans, 
192,193. 

Jefferson, Thomas, his personal- 
ity described, 56 ; friendly to 
France, 57 ; does not suspect 
Napoleon, 57; sends Livingston 
to Paris, 57 ; learns of Napoleon's 
design, 58; excitement in the 
country, 59; his good states- 
manship, 60; loves peace but is 
resolute, 62; sends Monroe to 



Index 



Europe, 64; slight interest in 
acquiring Louisiana, 64 ; his 
moral courage and steadfastness, 
67; his influence not great in 
bringing to us Louisiana, 148; 
embarrassed by news of the 
purchase, 148 ; wisdom and hu- 
manity of his course, 150 ; his 
constitutional scruples, 153 ; de- 
nounced by Federalists, 154; 
his final triumph, 160; his wise 
conduct after the purchase, 184. 
etc. 
Joseph Bonaparte, his quarrel 
with Napoleon over the sale of 
Louisiana, 73, etc. ; his intimacy 
with Livingston, 121. 

Kansas, admitted as a State, 202. 
King, Miss Grace, her account of 

the surrender of Louisiana, 161, 

etc. 
King, Eufus, fears as to the French 

in Louisiana, 117. 

La Bourdonnais, in India, 6. 

Lally-Tollendal, in India, 6. 

La Salle, birth and character, 10 ; 
discovers and names Louisiana, 
his plans, his faults, 11; his 
death, 12. 

Laussat, French prefect of New 
Orleans, 67 ; cedes Louisiana to 
United States, 161, etc. 

La Verendrye, father and sons, dis- 
cover the Eocky Mountains, 16. 

Law, John, and the Mississippi 
Bubble, 14. 

Le Clerc, appointed for San Do- 
mingo, 48 ; appears with army, 



the Northwe^t, 123 ; his 
ergy, 125 ; success, 141 ; 



strongly opposed, 50 ; dies of 
yellow fever, 51. 

Leroy-Beaulieu, on necessity to 
France of colonization, 3. 

Lewis and Clark, their explora- 
tion, 186, 187. 

Livingston, Robert R., envoy to 
France, 57 ; reports Napoleon's 
insult to British ambassador, 70, 
71 ; his career, 113 ; his letters 
from Paris, 115; does not fear 
France in Louisiana, 117 ; writes 
papers to influence Napoleon, 
118; on the First Consul's ab- 
solutism, 119 ; his intimacy with 
Joseph Bonaparte, 121 ; has a 
thought for the acquisition of 
en- 
his 
prophecy, 142. 

Locomotive, the creator of the 
New West, 202. 

Lord, W. Frewen, on French col- 
onization, 4, etc. 

Louisiana, founded and named by 
La Salle, 11 ; settled, 12 ; aban- 
doned, 21 ; under Spain, 22, etc. ; 
quarrel over, between Napoleon 
and his brothers, 73, etc. ; sold, 
141 ; surrendered by Laussat, 
scenes at the time of cession, 
161 ; unhappy in her new rela- 
tions, 178 ; boundaries settled, 
179; its vast extent, 183 ; States 
formed from, their population 
and wealth. 202; tlie hopeful 
outlook for them, 204. 

Lucien Bonaparte, his treaty, 37 ; 
his venality, 39 ; his ability and 
independence, 72; his account 
of the quarrel between Napoleon 



227 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 



and his brothers over the Louisi- 
ana sale, 73, etc. ; sums up Na- 
poleon's character, 112. 

Machiavelli, Napoleon on, 86. 

McMaster, on Louisiana under 
Spain, 41, etc. ; on the party 
wrangle over the purchase, 151, 
etc. 

Madison, James, Secretary of 
State, small interest in Louisi- 
ana, 63, 64. 

Massena, appointed to invade In- 
dia, 32. 

Masson, Frederic, his estimate of 
Napoleon, 30. 

Minnesota, admitted as a State, 
202. 

Missouri, becomes a State, 202. 

Missouri Compromise, 199. 

Monroe, James, sent to Europe in 
1803, 64 ; why selected, 65 : ar- 
rives at Paris in time for the 
treaty, 138 ; attributes all to Na- 
poleon, 144. 

Montana, receives statehood, 202. 

Montcalm, 18, 19. 

Morales, intendant at New Or- 
leans, abrogates right of deposit, 
61. 

Napoleon, his portrait at Minne- 
apolis, 28; his magnetic spell, 
30 ; interest in a colonial empire, 
31 ; plan for seizing India, 32 : 
plan for recovery of Louisiana, 
45, etc. ; attacks San Domingo, 
48 ; treats Toussaint badly, 49 ; 
presses the Louisiana expedi- 
tion, 51 ; unfriendliness to United 
States, 55 ; resolves on European 



war, 69, 70 ; quarrels with his 
brothers over sale of Louisiana, 
73, etc. ; his absolutism described 
by Livingston, 119 ; his declara- 
tions about the sale, 132 ; his 
thought for the people of Louisi- 
ana, 140 ; his leadership in the 
affair, 143 ; assumes all responsi- 
bility for the transaction, 144. 

Nebraska, admitted as a State, 202. 

Nebraska Bill, 200. 

New England, narrow horizon of 
early colonists, 8 ; her danger 
of destruction by the French, 
19; dissatisfied over the Louisi- 
ana Purchase as voiced by Jo- 
siah Quincy, 174, etc. 

New France, founded by Cham- 
plain, 8 ; surrendered in 1762, 
20; and again in 1803, 161, etc. ; 
near to reestablish ment at time 
of our civil war, 178. 

New Orleans, founded, 13 ; under 
Spanish rule, 41, etc.; at the 
time of cession to the United 
States, 161, etc. 

North Dakota, admitted as a State, 
202. 

Northwest coast, comes to the 
United States, 196. 



Oklahoma, 202. 
O'Reilly, Spanish 
Louisiana, 23. 



governor of 



Paoli, Corsican patriot, Napoleon's 

opinion of, 85. 
Parma, Duke of, son-in-law of 

King of Spain, how concerned 

in the retrocession of Louisiana, 

36, 38. 



228 



Index 



Pickering, Timothy, makes States- 
Eights speech in 1803, 157. 
Pike, Z. M., liis explorations, 187. 

Quebec, Cham plain at, 8 ; captured 
by English, 19. 

Quincy, Josiah, in 1811, threatens 
secession of Massachusetts if 
Louisiana is admitted to state- 
hood, 174:, etc. 

Eepublicans, wiser than the Fed- 
eralists in 1803, 150 ; their argu- 
ments, 155, 156. 

Retrocession of Louisiana to 
France by Spain, 54, 55. 

Eosebery, Lord, his estimate of 
Napoleon, 31. 

Eoss, Senator, his threatening res- 
olution in 1803, 68, 150. 

Eustan, Napoleon's Mameluke, 86. 

San Domingo, as a French colony, 
45 ; revolt of the blacks, 46 ; Le 
Clerc despatched, 48 ; utter fail- 
ure of French scheme, 51. 

San Ildefonso, treaty of, Berthier's 
agency, 36 ; Lucien Bonaparte's, 
37, 38 ; St. Cyr's, 54. 

Slavery, as promoted by the cot- 
ton-gin, 198. 

Sloan, W, M., on new interpreta- 
tion of the Constitution since 
1803, 2 ; on Napoleon's plan for 
invading India, 82. 

South Dakota, admitted as a State, 
202. 

Spain, acquires Louisiana, 22; her 
wealth, extent, and helpless- 
ness, 25; under Carlos IV, 33: 
her government of Louisiana, 



41, etc. ; her retrocession to 
France, 54, 55, 163 ; loses Flori- 
da, Texas, and NortJiwest coast, 
195, 196. 

Spoliation Claims, due by France 
to American citizens, 138. 

St. Cyr, Gouvion, at San Ilde- 
fonso, 54. 

Steamboats, successful on the 
Mississippi, 197. 

Suffren, in India, 6. 

Talleyrand, desires to recover 
Louisiana, 27 ; baffles Living- 
ston, 116, etc. ; certifies as to 
Livingston's persistency, 128. 

Talma, the actor, plays Hamlet, 
74; instructs Napoleon, 111. 

Texas, comes to the United States, 
196. 

Thiers, on origin and greatness of 
United States, 1. 

Toussaint I'Ouverture, his origin 
and character, 46 ; opposes the 
French, 48 ; his exile and death, 
50. 

United States, friendliness to, of 
Toussaint I'Ouverture, 48 ; un- 
friendliness to, of Napoleon, 55 ; 
accession of Jefferson to the 
presidency, 56 ; her envoys pur- 
chase Louisiana, 141 ; vast ex- 
pansion of her domain and 
power, 148 ; ceremonies of the 
cession, 161. 

Ursuline nuns, at New Orleans in 
the early time, 15 ; their grief 
over the purchase, and depart- 
ure, 162, 163. 



229 



History of The Louisiana Purchase 



Vergennes, tries to recover Louisi- 
ana, 2G. 

Victor, appointed to command in 
Louisiana, 53. 

Virgil, quoted by Lueien Bona- 
parte, 95. 

Whitney, Eli, invents cotton-gin, 
197. 



Wilkinson, United States Commis- 
sioner to receive Louisiana, 168; 
despatches Pike to explore, 188; 
his complicity with Burr, 191. 

Wolfe, captures Quebec, 19. 

Wyoming, admitted as a State, 202. 

Yrujo, Spanish ambassador at 
Washington, 62. 



THE EJTD 



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a book which one needs to own rather than to read and lay aside. No common- 
school library or collection of books for young readers should be without it." — 
The Church^nan. 

"These names are in themselves sufficient to guarantee adequacy of treatment 
and interest in the presentation, and it is safe to say that such succinct biographies 
of the complete portrait gallery of our Presidents, written with such unquestioned 
ability, have never before been published." — Hartjord Courant. 

"Just the sort of book that the American who wishes to fix in his mind the 
varying phases of his country's history as it is woven on the warp of the adminis- 
trations will find most useful. Everything is presented in a clear-cut way, and no 
pleasanter excursions into history can be found than a study of 'The Presidents of 
the United States.' " — Philadelphia Press. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



STANDARD HISTORICAL WORKS. 



History of the People of the United States, 

From the Revolution to the Civil War. By John Bach 
McMaster. To be completed in Six Volumes. Vols. I, II, 
III, IV, and V now ready. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top, ^2.50 each 

The Beginners of a Nation. 

By Edward Eggleston. A History of the Source and Rise 
of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special 
Reference to the Life and Character of the People. The first 
volume in a History of Life in the United States. Small 8vo. 
Cloth, with Maps, $1.50. 

The Household History of the United States 
and its People. 

By Edward Eggleston. For Young Americans. Richly 
illustrated with 350 Drawings, 75 Maps, etc. Square 8vo. 
Cloth, $2.50. 

The Rise and Growth of the English Nation. 

With Special Reference to Epochs and Crises. A History of 
and for the People. By W. H. S. Aubrey, LL. D. In three 
volumes. izmo. Cloth, ^4.50. 

Bancroft's History of the United States, 

From the Discovery of the Continent to the Establishment ot 
the Constitution in 1789. (Also Edition de Luxe, on large 
paper, limited to one hundred sets, numbered.) Complete in 
six volumes, with a Portrait of the Author. 8vo. Cloth, uncut, 
gilt top, ^15.00 ; half calf or half morocco, ^27.00 ; tree calf, 
$50.00. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



DR. EGGLESTON'S GREAT HISTORY. 



The Transit of Civilization 

From England to America in the Seventeenth Century. By 
Edward Eggleston. Uniform with **The Beginners of a 
Nation." Small 8vo, gilt top, uncut, cloth, ^1.50. 

All who have read ** The Beginners of a Nation " will wel- 
come this new volume by Mr. Eggleston. Though it is an 
independent work, it is also the second in the series upon which 
the author has long been engaged. Its aim is to reveal to the reader 
the mind of the seventeenth century man — to show where he 
stood in the intellectual development of the race ; what he knew 
of science, and how his character was determined by his limi- 
tations ; his bondage to tradition, his credulity, and the unreality 
of the world in which he Hved, with its witches, its omnipresent 
devil, its signaturism in plants and animals to guide medical 
practice, its belief in the virtue of sympathetic powder, weapon 
ointment, and the fabulous bezoar stone. The standards of con- 
duct of the age are shown, the educational aims and the evolu- 
tion of a school system unthought of then. 

The scope of the work may best be explained by the titles 
of the chapters, which are : 

1. Medical Outfit of the Early Colonists. 

2. Medical Notions at the Period of Settlement. 

3. Folk Speech and Mother English. 

4. Weights and Measures of Conduct. 

5. The Tradition of Education. 

6. Landholding in the Early Colonies. 

This is no ordinary historical work, but a startling view of 
life before science. No such account has ever been given of the 
colonists, and no such view exists of England in the seventeenth 
century. It may be read in entire independence of any other 
volume of the series. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



GREAT COMMANDERS. 
Edited by G«neral JAMES GRANT WILSON. 

This series forms one of the most notable collections of books that has 
been published for many years. The success it has met with since the first 
volume was issued, and the widespread attention it has attracted, indicate 
that it has satisfactorily fulfilled its purpose, viz., to provide in a popular 
form and moderate compass the records of the lives of men who have been 
conspicuously eminent in the great conflicts that established American in- 
dependence and maintained our national integrity and unity. Each biog- 
raphy has been written by an author especially well qualified for the task, 
and the result is not only a series of fascinating stories of the lives and deeds 
of great men, but a rich mine of valuable information for the student of 
American history and biography. 

Each, J2mo, cloth, gih top, $J*50 net 

Postaget n cents additional. 

NOW READY. 

Admiral Farragut - - - - By Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N. 

General Taylor By General O. O. Howard, U. S. A. 

General Jackson By James Parton. 

General Greene By General Francis V. Greene. 

General J. E» Johnston - - By Robert M. Hughes, of Virginia. 
General Thomas ------- By Henry Coppee, LL. D. 

General Scott By General Marcus J. Wright. 

General Washington - - - By General Bradley T. Johnson. 

General Lee By General Fitzhugh Lee. 

General Hancock By General Francis A. Walker. 

General Sheridan By General Henry E. Davies. 

General Grant By General James Grant Wilson. 

General Sherman By General Manning F. Force. 

Commodore Paul Jones - - - - By Cyrus Townsend Brady. 

General Meade By Isaac R. Pennypacker. 

General McCleUan By General Peter S. Michie. 

General Forrest By Captain J. Harvey Mathes. 

IN PREPARATION. 

Admiral Porter By James R. Solev, late Ass't Sec'y U. S. Navy. 

General Schofield An Autobiography. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK, 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 
n^HE BEGINNERS OF A NATION. A History 

■^ of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in 
America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character ol 
the People. The first volume in A History of Life in the 
United States. By Edward Eggleston. Small 8vo. Cloth, 
gilt top, uncut, with Maps, $1.50. 

" Few works on the period which it covers can compare with this in point of mere 
literary attractiveness, and we fancy that many to whom its scholarly value will not ap 
peal will read the volume with interest and delight." — New York Evening Post. 

" Written with a firm grasp of the theme, inspired by ample knowledge, and made 
attractive by a vigorous and resonant style, the book will receive much attention. It 
is a great theme the author has taken up, and he grasps it with the confidence of a 
master." — New York Times. 

" Mr. Eggleston's ' Beginners ' is unique. No similar historical study has, to our 
knowledge, ever been done in the same way. Mr. Eggleston is a reliable reporter ci 
facts; but he is also an exceedingly keen critic. He writes history without the effort 
to merge the critic in the historian. His sense of humor is never dormant. He renders 
some of the dullest passages in colonial annals actually amusing by his witty treatment 
of them. He finds a laugh for his readers where most of his predecessors have found 
yawns. And with all this he does not sacrifice the dignity of history for an instant."— 
Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

"The delightful style, the clear flow of the narrative, the philosophical tone, and 
the able analysis of men and events will commend Mr. Eggleston's work to earnest 
students." — Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

" The work is worthy of careful reading, not only because of the author's ability as a 
literary artist, but because of his conspicuous proficiency in interpreting the causes of 
and changes in American life and character." — Boston journal. 

"It is noticeable that Mr. Eggleston has followed no beaten track, tut has drawn 
his own conclusions as to the early period, and they differ from the generally received 
version not a little. The book is stimulating and will prove of great value to the stu- 
dent of history." — Minneapolis Journal. 

" A very interesting as well as a valuable book. ... A distinct advance upon most 
that has been written, particularly of the setdement of New England." — Newark 
A dvertiser. 

" One of the most important books of the year. It is a work of art as well as ol 
historical science, and its distinctive purpose is to give an insight into the real life and 
character of people. . . The author's style is charming, and the history is fully as inter- 
esting as a novel." — Brooklyn Standard-Union. 

" The value of Mr. Eggleston's work is in that it is really a history of 'life,' not 
merely a record of events. . . . The comprehensive purpose of his volume has been 
excellently performed. The book is eminently readable." — Philadelphia Timet. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. NEW YORK. 




D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



I STORY OF THE PEOPLE 
OF THE UNITED STATES, 
from the Revolution to the Civil 
War. By John Bach McMaster. 
To be completed in seven volumes. 
Vols. I, II, III, IV, and Vnow ready. 
8vo. Cloth, gilt top, $2.50 each. 

"... Prof. IMcMaster has told us what no other 
historians have told. . . . The skill, the animation, the 
brightness, the force, and the charm with which he ar- 
rays the facts befire us are such that we can hardly 
conceive of more interesting reading for an American 
citizen who cares to know the nature of those causes 
which have made not only him but his environment 
and the opportunities life has given him what they are." 

JOHN BACH MCMASTER. — ^- ^- Times. 

"Those who can read between the Hnes may discover in these pages constant 
evidences of care and skill and faithful labor, of which the old-time superficial essay- 
ists, compiling library notes on dates and striking events, had no conception; but 
to the general reader the fluent narrative gives no hint of the conscientious labors, 
far-reaching, world-wide, vast and yet microscopically minute, that give the strength 
and value which are felt rather than seen. This is due to the art of presentation. 
The author's position as a scientific workman we may accept on the abundant tes- 
timony of the experts who know the solid worth of his work: his skill as a literary 
artist we can all appreciate, the charm of his style being self-evident. —Philadelphia 
Telegraph. 

" The third volume contains the brilliantly written and fascinating story of the prog- 
ress and doings of the people of this country from the era of the Louisiana purchase 
to the opening scenes of the second war with Great Britain— say a period of ten years. 
In every page of the book the reader finds that fascinating flow of narrative, that 
clear and lucid style, and that penetrating power of thought and judgment which dis- 
tinguished the previous volumes."— Columdus Slate Jour7ial. 

"Prof. McAIaster has more than fulfilled the promises made in his first volumes, 
and his work is constantly growing better and more valuable as he brings it nearer 
to our own time. His style is clear, simple, and idiomatic, and there is just enough 
of the critical spirit in the narrative to guide the x&^^er:' —Boston Herald. 

" Take it all in all, the History promises to be the ideal American history. Not so 
much given to dates and battles and great events as in the fact that it is like a great 
panorama of the people, revealing their inner life and action. It contains, with all its 
sober facts, the spice of personalities and incidents, which relieves every page from 
dullness." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

" History written in this picturesque style will tempt the most heedless to read. 
Prof. McMaster is more than a stylist; he is a student, and his History abounds in 
evidences of research in quarters not before discovered by the historian. — Chicago 
Tribune. 

" A History sui generis which has made and will keep its own place in our litera. 
".are." — New York Evening Post. 

"His style is vigorous and his treatment candid and impartial."— iV<r«/ York 
Tribune. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



By EDGAR STANTON MACLAY, A. M. 



A History of the United States Navy. (1775 
to 1902.) — New and revised edition. 

In three volumes, the new volume containing an Account of the Navy 
since the Civil War, with a history of the Spanibh-American War 
revised to the date of this edition, and an Account of naval operations 
in the Philippines, etc. Technical Revision of the first two volumes 
by Lieutenant Roy C. Smith, U. S. N. Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, 
$3.00 net per volume ; postage, 26 cents per volume additional. 

In the new edition of Vol. Ill, which is now ready for publication, the author brings 
his History of the Navy down to the present time. In the prefaces of the volumes of 
this history the author has expressed and emphasized his desire for suggestions, new 
information, and corrections which might be utilized in perfecting his work. He has, 
therefore, carefully studied the evidence brought out at the recent Schley Court of 
Inquiry, and while the findings of that Court were for the most part in accordance with 
the results of his own historical investigations, he has modified certain portions of his 
narrative. Whatever opinions may be held regarding any phases of our recent naval 
history, the fact remains that the industry, care, and thoroughness, which were unani- 
mously praised by newspaper reviewers and experts in the case of the first two volumes, 
have been sedulously applied to the preparation of this new edition of the third volume. 

A History of American Privateers. 

Uniform with "A History of the United States Navy." One volume. 
Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, $3.00 net ; postage, 24 cents additional. 

After several years of research the distinguished historian of American sea power 
presents the first comprehensive account of one of the most picturesque and absorbing 
phases of our maritime warfare. 'I'he importance of the theme is indicated by the fact 
that the value of prizes and cargoes taken by privateers in the Revolution was three 
times that of the prizes and cargoes taken by naval vessels, while in the War of 1812 
we had 517 privateers and only 23 vessels in our navy. Mr. Maclay's romantic tale is 
accompanied by reproductions of contemporary pictures, portraits, and documents, and 
also by illustrations by Mr. George Gibbs. 

The Private Journal of William Maclay, 

United States Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789-1791. With Portrait 
from Original Miniature. Edited by Edgar Stanton Maclay, A. M. 
Large 8vo. Cloth, $2.25. 

During his two years in the Senate William Maclay kept a journal of his own in 
which he minutely recorded the transactions of each day. This record throws a flood 
of light on the doings of our first legislators. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



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